Goodwin Guides Sail Biomedicines in Strategic Collaboration to Advance In Vivo CAR-T Medicines

The Life Sciences team guided Sail Biomedicines on its strategic collaboration with Johnson & Johnson to develop a new class of in vivo CAR-T therapies for immune-mediated diseases. The collaboration combines Sail’s proprietary eRNA™ and targeted nanoparticle platform with Johnson & Johnson’s drug development, manufacturing, and commercialization capabilities to advance Sail’s lead in vivo CAR-T program and additional pipeline programs. Under the terms of the agreements, Sail will receive initial payments totaling $785 million, including a $465 million equity investment, and is eligible to receive an additional $140 million upon the achievement of certain development milestones. Johnson & Johnson also has an exclusive option to acquire Sail for an additional $2.58 billion.

Sail Biomedicines is a biotechnology company developing in vivo CAR-T therapies for immune-mediated diseases and pioneering AI-driven design and deployment of fully programmable RNA medicines to transform patient care. Sail’s platform combines eRNA™ constructs, a first-in-class programmable circular RNA product form, and an industry-leading platform of targeted nanoparticles to unlock comprehensive programming of medicines for the first time. Using its cutting-edge eRNA™ and nanoparticle deployment platform, Sail is building a pipeline of in vivo CAR-T based products. Sail was founded by Flagship Pioneering.

The Goodwin team was led by Danielle Lauzon, Felipe M. Heiderich, Sarah Stoiber, Kingsley Taft, Stuart Cable, Katie Hand, Dylan Miller, Austin Church, Ben Colao, Evan De Ycaza, Bartek Sudol, Lilly Weitz, Lauren Kidd, Daniel Karelitz, Arman Oruc, Kevin Walsh, Arom Yun, Alexandra Denniston, Morgan Frisoli, Austin S. Fahnestock, Jennifer Ford, Nathaniel A. Hsieh, Scott Zilora, Allison Goldsher, Christina Lewis, Wendy Pan, Yichen Xu, and Grace Wirth.

For more information on the deal, please read the press release.