21 March 2019 - - French biotechnology company Transgene (Euronext Paris: TNG) (PAR: TNG) has secured a EUR 20m revolving credit facility with Natixis, the French Corporate and Investment bank, the company said.

The credit facility will have a 30-month term and Transgene will be able to draw on and repay the facility at its discretion.

Transgene has used its shares in the Chinese biotech company Tasly Biopharmaceuticals as collateral for this loan.

As a reminder, Transgene became a Tasly Biopharmaceuticals shareholder in July 2018 and holds 2.5% of its capital as the result of a series of agreements under which Transgene transferred to Tasly Biopharmaceuticals its Chinese rights to T601 and T101, two immunotherapies discovered by Transgene and which are currently being developed by Tasly Biopharmaceuticals in Greater China.

Tasly Biopharmaceutials has announced its intention to list its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Transgene (Euronext: TNG) is a publicly traded French biotechnology company focused on designing and developing targeted immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Transgene's programmes utilise viral vector technology with the goal of indirectly or directly killing infected or cancerous cells.

The company's lead clinical-stage programs are: TG4010, a therapeutic vaccine against non-small cell lung cancer, Pexa-Vec, an oncolytic virus against liver cancer, and TG4001, a therapeutic vaccine against HPV-positive head and neck cancers.

The company has several other programmes in clinical development, including TG1050 (a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B) and TG6002 (an oncolytic virus for the treatment of solid tumors).

With its proprietary Invir.IO, Transgene builds on its expertise in viral vectors engineering to design a new generation of multifunctional oncolytic viruses.

myvac, an individualized MVA-based immunotherapy platform designed to integrate neoantigens, completes this innovative research portfolio. TG4050 is the first candidate selected from the myvac platform.