Flagship Pioneering, a scientific innovation engine for transformative platforms and products, announced a research program under its strategic collaboration with Pfizer whereby Flagship-founded Repertoire® Immune Medicines will identify and optimize TCR bispecifics for metastatic prostate cancer.

Pioneering Medicines, Flagship's in house drug discovery and development unit, is responsible for leading the strategic partnership with Pfizer, including driving the exploration process to rapidly surface potential drug development programs built on Flagship's diverse bioplatforms and modalities. The Repertoire agreement is the eighth program initiated under Flagship's strategic partnership with Pfizer announced in July 2023.

"Repertoire's DECODE platform uniquely maps the entire immune synapse, presenting enormous uncharted potential to discover new antigens capable of activating the immune system to fight cancer, and when coupled with Repertoire's immune medicine engineering technologies and capabilities, places us in a strong position to generate targeted medicines to engage them," said Torben Straight Nissen, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of Repertoire and Executive Partner at Flagship Pioneering. "Guided by Pfizer's drug development expertise in oncology, we will apply our platform to uncover new potential T-cell targeted medicines." 

As many as one in five men with prostate cancer progress to metastatic disease with many going on to develop resistance to successive lines of therapy. T cell receptor (TCR) bispecifics have emerged as a promising immunotherapy with the potential to overcome several barriers associated with disease progression. The aim of the research program is to identify and develop an early optimized TCR bispecific lead that could provide durable disease control and reduced toxicity.

"This research program with Repertoire demonstrates both the continued momentum in our strategic alliance with Pfizer and the breadth of novel modalities our Flagship companies offer as a supply chain of potential therapeutic innovation," said Paul Biondi, Flagship Pioneering Managing Partner. "We have now collaborated on eight programs across multiple modalities and five therapeutic areas in our shared commitment with Pfizer to co-create a pipeline of novel candidates that have a potential to become differentiated medicines with greater precision, speed, and scale for the patients who need them most."