Amgen and TScan Therapeutics have announced a multi-year collaboration aimed at identifying new targets for Crohn's disease.

The partnership will utilise TScan’s target discovery platform, TargetScan, to identify the antigens recognised by T cells in patients with Crohn's disease.

Amgen will then develop therapeutics based on the discovered targets and will retain all global development and commercial rights.

In exchange, TScan will receive an upfront payment of $30m and will be eligible for over $500m in success-based preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones as well as tiered single-digit royalties.

Under the terms of the agreement, Amgen has an option to expand the collaboration to ulcerative colitis, with each company responsible for its own research expenses.

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are both inflammatory bowel diseases, characterised by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Nearly one in every 100 people in the US are diagnosed with IBD.

Despite the availability of a range of treatments for IBD, not every patient achieves long-lasting remission, underscoring the need for new treatment options.

Raymond Deshaies, senior vice president of global research at Amgen, said: "Anti-inflammatory drugs have traditionally been the standard of care for patients suffering from IBD, but often lack efficacy and durability.

"TScan's platform provides a best-in-class approach to identify non-conventional drug targets to enable the development of potential first-in-class therapeutics to address unmet medical needs."

Gavin MacBeath, acting chief executive officer and chief scientific and operating officer at TScan, added: "Our TargetScan platform, which we have now extended to identify MHC class II targets of CD4+ T cells, is well-suited for the discovery of antigens targeted by the immune system in inflammatory bowel disease.”

The partnership comes less than a month after AbbVie's Rinvoq (upadacitinib) was approved by the European Commission as the first oral Janus Kinase inhibitor to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease.

Rinvoq was approved in the UK for Crohn’s disease earlier this year – a decision which signalled the first marketing authorisation globally for the use of the treatment in this patient population.

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