Stephenson Harwood advises Oxford Biomedica on gene therapy collaboration

Law firm Stephenson Harwood LLP has advised gene and cell therapy company Oxford Biomedica on its collaboration with biopharmaceutical company PhoreMost, to develop next-generation CAR-T cell therapies.

CAR-T therapies, or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies, modify T-cells to recognise cancer cells in order to more effectively target and destroy them.

PhoreMost, a UK-based business dedicated to developing drugs against intractable disease targets, will deploy its in-house expertise and next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER®, to identify therapeutic candidates for Oxford Biomedica's LentiVector® gene therapy delivery system. The programme will initially focus on CAR-T therapy and aims to develop next-generation cell therapies with significantly improved efficacy and durability.

The Stephenson Harwood team advising Oxford Biomedica was led by partner Alexandra Pygall, and assisted predominantly by Anne Stoffels.