Date: 2015-07-24
Type of information: Termination of an agreement
Compound: DARPin® biologics conjugated to toxic agents
Company: Molecular Partners (Switzerland) Roche (Switzerland)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: R&D
development
commercialisation
Action mechanism: DARPins® are a new generation of target-binding proteins which can be isolated from large libraries. These non-antibody-based small proteins include a variable region that has been engineered for target binding. They combine the high specificity, selectivity and safety of monoclonal antibodies with many advantages of small molecules, including high stability and low-cost production and adding the ability of combining multiple specificities. DARPins® can be combined into multispecific drug candidates without compromising biophysical and development characteristics. They can be used as targeting agents to deliver toxic agents to tumors to kill cancer cells. As a result of their ability to bind to different epitopes than antibodies, and by binding to multiple epitopes or targets in parallel at the same time, DARPins are believed to have a higher selectivity for tumor cells compared to other biologics including antibody drug conjugates.
Disease: cancer
Details: * On December 4, 2013, Roche and Molecular Partners have announced that they have entered into a research collaboration and licensing agreement to discover, develop and commercialize several proprietary therapeutics incorporating Molecular Partners’ DARPin® biologics conjugated to toxic agents developed at Roche for the treatment of cancer. Under the terms of the agreement, Roche has rights to develop and commercialize several DARPin-based products.
Financial terms: Molecular Partners is entitled to receive upfront and initiation payments up to CHF 55 million. Furthermore, Molecular Partners will receive research funding and can earn more than CHF 1 billion if all development and sales milestones are met for all potential products. In addition Molecular Partners will receive tiered royalties on any future product sales into the double-digit percentage range.
Latest news: * On July 24, 2015, Molecular Partners reiterated its commitment to its un-partnered pipeline. This includes advancing the clinical and preclinical development pipeline and ramping up the activities in immuno-oncology. Following Molecular Partners’ expansion of its strategic ophthalmology partnership with Allergan, the company confirmed the discontinuation of the DARPin-toxin alliance with Roche. Molecular Partners had entered into an oncology alliance with Roche in December 2013. Under this partnership, Roche and Molecular Partners generated DARPin-toxin fusion candidates. Roche is currently terminating its Pseudomonas exotoxin conjugate programs, including antibody and DARPin-based projects. The agreement put in place between Molecular Partners and Roche was specific for the use of DARPins in combination with Pseudomonas exotoxin. “The DARPin platform generated highly differentiated binders in short time, and it is unfortunate that Roche decided to discontinue these programs for reasons related to the toxin,“ said Christian Zahnd, Chief Executive Officer of Molecular Partners and continued: “We discussed other areas of mutual interest, but given our own proprietary focus on immuno-oncology, it made no sense to amend the current collaboration. This way, we can avoid working on potentially competing pathways.” Molecular Partners will evaluate if DARPins from the collaboration will be added to its proprietary pipeline directly or repurposed in other programs.
