Massachusetts-based CREATE Medicines, Inc. has entered a strategic research collaboration and exclusive license agreement with Australia-based Monash University's Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), adding next-generation lipid nanoparticle (LNP) chemistry and cell-targeting technologies to its mRNA-based in vivo chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) platform. The deal arrives one day after CREATE received regulatory approval to initiate a first-in-human Phase I/II trial of CRT-402, its CD19-targeted in vivo CAR-T candidate for autoimmune diseases — a pairing that illustrates CREATE's simultaneous push into the clinic and expansion of its delivery IP estate.
Under the agreement, CREATE receives a worldwide exclusive license to all intellectual property arising from the collaboration, including rights to develop and commercialize CAR products directed to designated CAR targets. MIPS will receive research funding from CREATE, with downstream milestone and royalty payments tied to development and commercialization. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The collaboration will be led by Professor Angus Johnston, whose laboratory develops targeted nanoparticle delivery systems, building on recent work in Nature Nanotechnology describing cell-selective mRNA delivery.
Targeted delivery to specific immune cell types, rather than default liver tropism of conventional LNPs, is one of the primary unsolved engineering challenges in in vivo cell therapy. CREATE's existing platform includes multiple programs, led by MT-304, a HER2-targeted multi-immune in vivo CAR therapy which entered Phase I/II in April 2026. The Monash collaboration adds modular, adaptable LNP chemistry to that validated base.