Beroni Group, an Australia-based biopharmaceutical enterprise, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with tella, Inc. to collaborate in the field of immunotherapy for cancer treatment.

tella is a Japanese company working to develop cancer vaccines. tella’s dendritic cell vaccine therapy aims to increase the dendritic cell population and strengthen the attacking system against cancers. In 2019, tella’s dendritic cell vaccine therapy was provided to approximately 12,200 patients in 28 medical institutions around Japan.

Beroni and tella will leverage the resources of each party and their respective affiliates such as technologies, knowledge and networks, are of high value to each other. The companies plan to build strategic partnerships in the field of immunotherapy for cancer treatment, such as conducting clinical trials in dendritic cell vaccine and gamma delta T cells in both Japan and China, crossing shareholding by both parties, technical exchange between both parties and other strategic developments.

“Dendritic cell vaccine therapy has been studied around the world as an advanced ‘state-of-the-art cancer immune cell therapy’ that ensures more reliable action on fighting cancer cells by employing the patient’s own immune cells, than other cancer vaccines. It is also expected to be effective for prevention or recurrence after standard treatment,” said Tomoyuki Taira, President of tella, Inc. “We look forward to a long- term and cooperative working relationship with Beroni. This collaboration can help us provide dendritic cell vaccine therapy to more people in more geographical locations and more cancer patients can thus be cured.”

“This is a significant milestone in advancing our clinical trials in cancer treatment. With this partnership, we can conduct clinical trials together with tella in Japan. With our multicenter clinical studies, we can include a larger number of participants in diverse geographical locations and can compare results among centers, thereby increasing the generalizability of our study results,” saidd Jacky Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Beroni Group. “We are excited to work with tella in developing new cell therapies using their advanced dendritic cell vaccine therapy. We also look forward to developing our new cellular immunotherapy based on gamma delta T cells with tella in Japan.”