SAN FRANCISCO – Intrexon Corp. and Ziopharm Oncology Inc. disclosed after Tuesday's market close that they will provide $50 million each in their common shares to MD Anderson Cancer Center as part of a broad exclusive licensing agreement to develop nonviral adoptive cellular cancer immunotherapies.

The deal includes an exclusive sublicensing agreement through MD Anderson for intellectual property developed at the University of Minnesota in the laboratories of Laurence Cooper, professor of pediatrics at MD Anderson, and Perry Hackett, professor in the College of Biological Sciences at Minnesota. The companies also committed to provide $15 million to $20 million annually over three years for additional research and technology development and said the partners will sign additional collaboration and technology transfer agreements to accelerate technology and clinical development.

Randal (RJ) Kirk, Intrexon's intrepid chairman and CEO, made clear during remarks Wednesday morning at the 33rd Annual J.P. Morgan (JPM) Healthcare Conference that Intrexon isn't quite finished with deals in the space.

"We have more cards to turn over in the coming days and weeks," he said.

Investors of Germantown, Md.-based Intrexon cheered the deal, sending the company's shares (NYSE:XON) to a 52-week high of $38.60. The stock closed the day at $37.30 for a gain of $8.93, or 31.5 percent, on volume of 5 million shares.

Kirk has spent much of the past two years seeking to educate the market about Intrexon's approach to the broad opportunities in synthetic biology, including a pointed lesson at last year's JPM about the company's goal to dominate the space. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 17, 2014.)

"I think they're starting to get it," he told BioWorld Today following Intrexon's breakout session at JPM.

Intrexon, Kirk said, is in the business of enabling high-value products, with "an intensity in health care" – mainly gene and cell therapy – that will continue to grow as well as increasingly diverse footprints in environmental science, energy and food. The company is the largest producer of nonmurine animal cloning, large research animal models and bovine embryos, he claimed.

In the meantime, the concept of synthetic biology is exploding to the point where it will become commonplace, Kirk maintained. "It's a term that eventually will disappear because it will become ubiquitous," he predicted.

Partner Ziopharm, of Boston, which has staggered in developing its internal pipeline, also saw shares (NASDAQ:ZIOP) spike to a one-year high of $9.50 on the deal. The stock closed Wednesday at $8.87 for a gain of $3.13, or 54.5 percent. Approximately 38.4 million shares were traded, or more than 35 times average volume.

Ziopharm and Intrexon originally shook hands in 2011 to develop and commercialize DNA-based cancer therapies using Intrexon's Ultravector technology, with Ziopharm gaining the rights to two clinical-stage candidates. In that agreement, Intrexon purchased approximately 5 percent of Ziopharm's outstanding shares in a private placement of approximately $11.6 million. Ziopharm agreed to issue Intrexon about 3.6 million additional shares for no additional financial consideration when the first patient was dosed in a phase II trial, and Intrexon agreed to purchase up to $50 million more in conjunction with future Ziopharm securities offerings. In return, Ziopharm agreed to pay Intrexon 50 percent of the net quarterly profits from sales of products developed under the partnership.

Ziopharm almost immediately raised $59.4 million through an underwritten public offering to expand clinical trial programs for the alkylating agent palifosfamide (Zymafos, or ZIO-201) in sarcoma and other cancers, darinaparsin (Zinapar, or ZIO-101) in hematologic and solid cancers and indibulin (Zybulin, or ZIO-301), an oral tubulin binding agent that targets mitosis and cancer cell migration. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 4, 2011.)

In 2013, Ziopharm's phase III trial with palifosfamide in first-line, metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma failed to meet the primary endpoint of progression-free survival, and the company said it would shift its efforts to synthetic biology programs with Intrexon. (See BioWorld Today, March 27, 2013.)

Last year, Ziopharm expanded a darinaparsin deal with Tokyo-based Solasia Pharma K.K., originally focused on specific Pan-Asian/Pacific territories, to include global development and commercialization rights. Development of indibulin also was halted, according to Cortellis Clinical Trials Intelligence. (See BioWorld Today, March 8, 2011.)

The Cooper and Hackett laboratories that are the focus of the MD Anderson licensing deal pioneered the design and clinical investigation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. They used a nonviral DNA plasmid-based gene transfer system, known as Sleeping Beauty, to modify T cells by creating a CAR that recognizes and binds to a specific cell surface protein on targeted malignant cells. MD Anderson subsequently built onto the technology to deliver patient-derived T cells and to develop approaches to generate products for universal off-the-shelf applications.

Using the MD Anderson knowhow, the partners will seek to marshal Intrexon's technology suite and Ziopharm's Rheoswitch Therapeutic System, or RTS, interleukin-12 modules to maximize the potential of genetically modified CAR T cells by tightly controlling cell expansion and activation in the body and minimizing off-target effects and toxicity for greater therapeutic efficacy. The approach differs from early CAR T programs by companies such as Novartis AG, Juno Therapeutics Inc. and Kite Pharma Inc. and others that have pioneered the field.

Although MD Anderson has a dizzying array of agreements with companies such as Amgen Inc., Glaxosmithkline plc and Astrazeneca plc and has spawned its own start-ups, Ron DePinho, the institution's president, called the agreement "one of MD Anderson's most substantial collaborations."

The partners plan to pursue both hematologic and solid tumor malignancies and predicted that clinical testing of the technology at MD Anderson will pave the way for the design and implementation of modified T cells that can be used in many types of malignancies. Up to five CARs are expected to enter the clinic this year, with off-the-shelf programs beginning in 2016.

Perhaps in response to some suggestions on the Street that the MD Anderson CAR T technology was snubbed by big pharma and might be late to the game, Kirk maintained that, to get the deal done to meet a self-imposed timeline, "we had to push off some of the technical aspects of research collaboration," suggesting the agreement was bigger than the sum of its parts.

He also took a swipe at big pharma.

"Increasingly, you have to ask yourself what value these dinosaurs bring to the market at all," Kirk said. "I don't think these companies have any business being in research and development."

However, Kirk deflected the notion that his approach represented a new vision for biotech, maintaining that progress in the industry "is all about execution. Nobody's technology lasts forever."