Welcome to the Transgene Conference Call. My name is Josh, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note that this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen- only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero, and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Cecile Razambou, Corporate Communication and Investor Relations at Transgene, to begin today's conference. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Cecile Razambou, Corporate Communication and Investor Relations Manager at Transgene. With me today are Hedi Ben Brahim, CEO of Transgene, and Eric Quéméneur, Chief Scientific Officer at Transgene. Thank you all for being with us today. We are extremely pleased to share with you that AstraZeneca has exercised its first license option for an oncolytic virus generated by Transgene in the Invir.IO platform. I remind you that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. If you wish to ask questions, you will need to connect via the conference call number available in the press release issued this morning. I will now hand over to Hedi Ben Brahim.
Thanks, Cecile. Hello, everyone. I'm really happy to be talking with you today, and we are very proud that AstraZeneca has decided to exercise its first license option for an oncolytic virus generated from our ongoing Invir.IO collaboration. We will receive for that an $8 million option exercise payment. This oncolytic virus is based on Transgene double-deleted vaccinia virus, Copenhagen TK⁻/RR⁻ patented virus backbone, and codes for an undisclosed payload chosen by AstraZeneca. As a reminder, Transgene and AstraZeneca entered into a collaboration and an exclusive license option agreement for innovative Invir.IO-based armed oncolytic immunotherapies in 2019. The agreement included a collaborative research option and an exclusive license agreement to co-develop five- armed oncolytic vaccinia virus candidates. At the signature of the agreement, we received $10 million upfront.
We are also eligible to receive development, regulatory, and sales-based milestones payments, as well as a royalty based on future commercial sales. Since 2019, we have received some ongoing payments related to the delivery of the products and production costs. Through this agreement, we are providing AstraZeneca with our oncolytic virus expertise, including viral design and engineering. We also provide access to our novel and improved vaccinia virus double- deleted backbone, which forms the basis of our Invir.IO platform, as you know. We are fully responsible for the in vitro preclinical development of the oncolytic virus candidates generated from the collaboration. In addition to the R&D, we are able to provide CMC regulatory or toxicology expertise required to move the candidate forward. We also have the ability to manufacture GMP batches of Invir.IO oncolytic viruses, thanks to our own unique pilot plant.
Under the agreement, AstraZeneca can select several transgenes to be included within this candidate and other potential candidates, and is responsible for further in vivo preclinical development. AstraZeneca is also able to progress the clinical development and commercialization for this candidate and each of the other four potential candidates by taking up a license. Today's announcement is especially important for Transgene and its Invir.IO platform, reflecting its attractiveness to the pharma industry. Our vaccinia virus double-deleted patented backbone has unique properties that make it a promising vector for cancer treatment. In addition, our expertise in virus engineering allows to move this type of immunotherapy to a new level by encoding a wide range of potential anticancer weapons.
This important milestone also reinforces the value of our other OVs in development based on the same platform, including TG6002 and BT-001, as well as future drug candidates. I will now hand over to Eric to give more details and introduce our novel and improved vaccinia virus double-deleted backbone used for this oncolytic virus covered by the exercise of AstraZeneca's license option.
Thank you, Hedi, and hello, everyone. This conference is a good opportunity to remind you what Transgene has developed over the years and its long experience in developing armed VVs based on the proprietary vectors. We are very confident that this approach of armed viruses has the potential to be very transformational in immuno-oncology. The potency of the approach lies in the fact that it combines three complementary modes of actions in order to target, control, and ultimately destroy the tumor, the solid tumors. The first mechanism is the selective replication of the virus in cancer cells and its ability to induce direct cell lysis after viral replication and induction of tumor host cell lysis.
The second mechanism is the local immunogenic impact of the viral infection to ignite the immune system to recruit the immune cells, and particularly to induce this effect in the so-called cold tumors that are immune desert, and to transform them into hot phenotype with more infiltration of the lymphocytes. Thirdly, we also exploit the viral vector as a targeted gene delivery system to deliver particular payloads in the tumor microenvironment in order to change the phenotype of the tumor in terms of immune response ability to respond to immune therapies and other therapies. At Transgene, our Invir.IO products are based on the Copenhagen strain of vaccinia virus, which has demonstrated in comparative trials several very strong cytolytic properties and very good safety profile in comparison with other vaccinia strains.
The sparing of the healthy cells, and particularly the sparing of immune cells, has been enhanced by the two targeted deletions that we have made in viral genome. The first one in the J2R locus, encoding for thymidine kinase. The second one in the I4L locus, encoding for the alpha subunit of the ribonucleotide reductase. The vector obtained in this way, the so-called double-deleted VV-COP TK⁻/RR⁻, has been patented four years ago and has served as the basis for our technological platform, on which we are developing this large series of products, encoding for specific recombinant payloads, to be expressed in the tumor environment and to adapt to the specific characteristics of the tumor.
Of course, we have in mind when designing those products that they will be combined with other treatment modalities, and some of those contracts are designed to optimize the activity of additional treatment modality. The ability of the VV-COP TK⁻/RR⁻ to induce immunogenic cell death and thus favor tumor infiltration by lymphocytes and NK cells was reported three years ago. You might refer to our Cancer Research paper and associated publications to have a full idea on the immunogenic ability of the virus. At the SITC Conference this year, we presented some data that would complement those we published last year on BT001, the product that we co-developed with BioInvent, in which is one of our most clinically advanced oncolytic virus in the clinic.
This study demonstrated that such armed OV can drastically remodel the immune phenotype of cold tumors. We have example with MC38 and also additional tumors and Lewis lung tumor, and we demonstrate really the potency of the vector and the ability to control the expression of the payload in the TME. Thanks to the very large genome capacity of our Invir.IO backbone and our expertise in virus engineering, we are able to design under the control of our gene promoters a large series of products expressing various immune modulators like full-length antibodies, synthetic multi-domain antibodies, full-length enzymes or cytokines, and combinations of those products.
The flexibility of the platform and the ability to optimize the recombinant expression of selected payloads are major strengths for the technologies and were key factors in the launching of the collaboration with AstraZeneca. In addition to this, very attractive property of the virus, we have also demonstrated in the clinic that our Invir.IO-based product can be administered via several routes, such as intratumoral or intravenous routes. This was an important point in the discussion with AstraZeneca. Indeed, our phase I data with TG6002 presented at ESMO this year confirmed that vector can reach liver metastasis, replicate therein, and express its recombinant payload, FCU1, for up to weeks.
These data are very significant in the field, as they suggest that our Invir.IO product could be used to address a broad range of solid tumors, which is encouraging for cancer patients, and also very important in supporting our collaboration with AstraZeneca. In summary, the unique properties of our platform, as well as our capabilities in bioengineering and manufacturing, are really major assets. We have developed a very productive working relationship with the team at AstraZeneca. Both our scientists and AstraZeneca scientists have had very stimulating and challenging interactions and mindsets. It is a pleasure to work so close together, and we are happy with this first achievement in the program, and of course, motivated to succeed in the other defined product. Now I will let Hedi tell you more about this first outcome of the collaboration.
Thank you, Eric. AstraZeneca and Transgene have developed a very productive collaborative relationship. Indeed, we have developed a fruitful working relationship with the team at AstraZeneca, and they have been very appreciative of Transgene's deep and long-standing expertise in developing unique oncolytic viruses. They are supporting Transgene with the aim to design oncolytic viruses able to express payload of interest to them that they believe will enhance the OVs' antitumor properties in an effective manner. Today, the first OV in this program has successfully completed the pre-development stage. This far- licensed option exercise is a validation of our innovative Invir.IO platform, and we are confident AstraZeneca will exercise further license options in the future. We hope that the resulting armed oncolytic virus immunotherapies will have the potential to provide cancer patients with better treatment options.
In parallel, we will continue the development of our proprietary Invir.IO pipeline and are looking forward to seeing novel oncolytic virus candidates progress into clinical development. With that, we will now take your questions.
Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypads now, please. Please ensure your line is unmuted and then I will introduce you into the call. On the phone, that's star one on your telephone keypad now, please. Okay, it doesn't look like we have any questions on the phone at the moment. Just as a reminder, it is star one on your telephone keypads now. Again, there are no questions coming through, so I'll hand you back over to the host.
Sure. Thank you. Thanks for your time and your interest. I think the communication is very straightforward, and probably that's why we don't have any questions today. To conclude, we are very pleased that AstraZeneca has exercised its first license option for an oncolytic virus generated by Transgene Invir.IO platform, leading to them making an $8 million payment to Transgene. This milestone, which is part of an important collaboration with AstraZeneca, further validates the potential of our novel Invir.IO oncolytic virus platform and its unique capabilities. We are looking forward to seeing this exciting OV candidate progress into clinical development. Today's news concludes a very positive year for Transgene, which started with the acceleration in clinical trials in H1, the very promising data for individualized antigen vaccine Myvac, and now this option exercise from AstraZeneca.
I'm sure that 2022 will be another year of important value-adding developments for Transgene. Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your handsets. Hosts, please stay on the line. Thank you.