By Kate Goodwin

Pictured: Businessmen shaking hands/iStock, Tippapatt

Japanese biopharma PeptiDream on Wednesday announced yet another licensing agreement with Roche’s Genentech, this time worth up to $1 billion.
The latest deal builds on previous partnerships between the two companies starting in December 2015 with licensing in 2016 and an expansion deal in 2018.
PeptiDream will receive $40 million upfront for R&D of its macrocyclic peptide-radioisotope drug conjugates. Going forward, another $1 billion is on the line in milestones plus tiered royalties of product sales to markets outside of Japan. PeptiDream will oversee preclinical activities to develop a peptide-RI drug conjugate and retain rights in Japan for any products developed.
While a particular target was not disclosed, PeptiDream CEO Patrick Reid said in a statement that the company hopes to “bring innovative first-in-class peptide radiopharmaceuticals to patients worldwide.”
The peptide-RI drug conjugates in the deal with Genentech are designed to use radioisotopes to hit a cancer cell directly, minimizing off-target toxicity. The biopharma’s Peptide Discovery Platform System is designed to identify a range of candidates for peptide-based, small molecule-based or peptide drug conjugates-based therapeutics.
Genentech is just one of many big pharma’s to partner with the company. PeptiDream’s pipeline is full of well-known partners including Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Merck and Novartis.
BMS has two oncology assets that are partnered with PeptiDream. One is a PD-L1 inhibitor peptide and the other is a radiopharmaceutical diagnostic agent to evaluate PD-1/PD-L1 expression in patients. Both are currently in Phase I testing.
In March 2023, PeptiDream announced a second targeted peptide radiopharmaceutical candidate has been nominated for clinical development in its partnership with RayzeBio. The first candidate is indicated for liver cancer, a disease with a market size estimated at $5.3 billion by 2029 in the eight major markets, according to PeptiDream.