In May 2018, Janssen Biotech, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, acquired BeneVir BioPharm, Inc.. BeneVir is a biotechnology company developing immunotherapies for cancer. Licensed from New York University (NYU) and originally developed by Ian J. Mohr, Ph.D. at NYU's Langone Medical Center, BeneVir is using this core technology to develop a pipeline of cancer immunotherapy drug candidates that affect antigen presentation in both tumor cells and antigen-presenting cells. The firm's oncolytic viruses are similar to Amgen's ($AMGN) T-Vec that can kill cancer cells but with a twist: the treatments are also supposed to "remodel" the antigens on antigen-presenting cells so that the immune system can target and eliminate both immune-susceptible cells as well as immune-evading cells. That "triple shot" at cancer is designed to achieve a durable response--the key goal for new drugs that designed to both knock back cancer and then hold it back, preventing a relapse.
