Astellas Pharma had only signed an exclusive licensing deal with Universal Cells back in October for the co-development of a particular drug candidate utilising the latter company’s technology, four months later Astellas has returned to buyout the company.
Clearly, Astellas liked what it saw during the exploratory deal to use Universal Cells’ proprietary Universal Donor Cell technology – this sees the biotech able to create cell therapy products that do not require Human Leukocyte antigen matching.
