Baxalta pursues cellular therapy

Baxalta will pay $105 million to genome-editing firm Precision BioSciences as part of a pact to develop off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CART) therapies for six cancer targets. The most advanced CART therapies have been highly personalized: Companies reengineer a patient’s own T cells to find and destroy cancer cells. Precision BioSciences’ genome-editing technology allows CARTs to be developed from healthy donors as treatments for multiple patients. The partners expect the first allogeneic CART therapy will enter the clinic late next year.