Bellicum, Astellas Announce License Agreement for Cancer Target PSCA in Cell and Gene Therapy

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

and Astellas Pharma Inc.

today announced that Agensys, Inc. ("Agensys"), an affiliate of Astellas, and Bellicum have entered into a global license agreement, granting Bellicum rights to develop and commercialize adoptive cell therapies, including CAR-T cells, for tumors expressing Prostate Stem Cell Antigen (PSCA) using PSCA technology, both in-licensed and developed at Agensys. PSCA is a cancer antigen expressed in many malignancies, including prostate, pancreatic, bladder, esophagus, and gastric cancers. Bellicum is developing BPX-601, a GoCAR-T™ product candidate targeting PSCA that has demonstrated robust anti-tumor activity in preclinical studies. GoCAR-T is a proprietary Bellicum technology in which an MC (MyD88/CD40)