Genentech has agreed to pay Immunocore between $10 million and $30 million each for new cancer immunotherapies developed using the U.K. biotech’s drug development platform.

Immunocore is also eligible for additional payments of more than $300 million per program for meeting development and commercial milestone. The deal also includes undisclosed but “significant” tiered royalties.

“We are very pleased to have Genentech, a recognized leader in oncology, on board as our first major partner to discover, develop and commercialize ImmTAC therapies against multiple cancer targets,” says James Noble, CEO of Immunocore.

Immunocore’s platform technology generates modified T cell receptors as drugs for the treatment of cancer and viral infection. The technology, termed ImmTAC for immune mobilizing monoclonal T cell receptors against cancer, creates fusion proteins specific to and deadly for cancer cells. The T cell receptor portion is engineered to recognize foreign proteins and the antibody fragment portion activates the immune system to kill the specific cancer or infected cells.

The T cell receptor leveraged by Immunocore can be engineered against a wide variety of targets, including cancer cell surface proteins, virus surface proteins, secreted proteins, or proteins from inside a cancer cell that have been processed and presented to T cells.

“Our collaboration with Genentech generating ImmTACs against these novel targets allows us jointly to explore the true potential of the technology,” says Bent Jakobsen, Immunocore’s CSO and founder.