AstraZeneca (AZ) and Absci have entered into a collaboration agreement worth up to $247m to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-designed antibody drug for a specified oncology target. The partnership will combine AZ’s capabilities in oncology research and development with Absci’s Integrated Drug Creation platform, which the generative AI company says “unlocks the potential to accelerate time to clinic and increase the probability of success by simultaneously optimising multiple drug characteristics important to both development and therapeutic benefit”. The agreement includes an upfront commitment from AZ as well as research and development funding, milestone payments and royalties on product sales. Puja Sapra, senior vice president of biologics engineering and oncology targeted delivery at AZ, said: “This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to utilise Absci’s de novo AI antibody creation platform to design a potential new antibody therapy in oncology.” Absci outlines that its approach “overcomes the limits of traditional drug discovery”. ...
In a bid to expand its oncology pipeline AbbVie has announced it will acquire ImmunoGen under a definitive agreement. The proposed $10.1bn acquisition will see AbbVie purchase ImmunoGen’s outstanding shares at $31.26 per share. The acquisition is expected to be completed in mid-2024. On an investor call following the announcement this morning (30 November), AbbVie’s executive vice president and chief financial officer Scott Reents, said the funding of the transaction will be driven by a combination of cash and debt. The exact split of cash and debt has not been indicated, but Reents anticipates that AbbVie will spend at least $2bn in cash in the acquisition. Through the transaction, AbbVie will gain an asset in Elahere (mirvetuximab soravtansine-gynx), ImmunoGen’s lead antibody-drug candidate (ADC), which received an accelerated approval to treat folate receptor alpha (FRα)-positive, platinum resistant ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer, in November 2022. As per AbbVie’s executive ...
Pictured: Cancer cell surrounded by cytokines/iStock, Marcin Klapczynski Alkermes on Wednesday announced that it has completed the spinoff of its oncology business to become a pure-play neuroscience company. Mural Oncology will begin trading on the Nasdaq starting Thursday, with Alkermes shareholders receiving a share of Mural for every 10 shares of Alkermes. Mural is launching with $275 million, which is expected to fund it through the fourth quarter of 2025, and an interleukin-2 cytokine as its most advanced asset. Nemvaleukin alfa is being studied as a monotherapy for advanced mucosal or cutaneous melanoma in Phase II and is in a Phase III study in combination with Keytruda for platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian cancer. The therapeutic is designed to avoid the hallmark toxicities of IL-2 immunotherapies. The studies are potentially registrational with readouts expected in early 2025. Additional assets include therapies targeting IL-18 and IL-12. Mural will nominate a development candidate for each program in ...
Merck KGaA has signed a licensing agreement worth over €1.4bn with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals for the rights to its next-generation PARP1 inhibitor HRS-1167 outside of China. The deal also includes an option for an exclusive licence for its Claudin-18.2 antibody drug conjugate (ADC), SHR-A1904. Compared to first-generation PARP inhibitors, HRS-1167 has higher selectivity and affinity for PARP1 and induces DNA trapping, Merck said, adding that the candidate is currently in phase 1 clinical development and “has the potential to be used as a monotherapy and as part of a combination therapy for treating a wider range of patients”. Danny Bar-Zohar, global head of research and development and chief medical officer for the Healthcare business of Merck KGaA, said: “This partnership with Hengrui fully aligns with both our external innovation ambition and our oncology research and development strategy by diversifying our robust internal pipeline in our focus areas of DNA damage ...
Dive Brief Siemens Healthineers has acquired Aspekt Solutions to strengthen the service offering at its Varian cancer therapy unit. Neither party disclosed the value of the deal. Aspekt supports radiation oncology sites — the type of health centers that use Varian devices — with services such as dosimetry consulting, clinic management, technology evaluation and staffing. Varian sees the acquisition as complementary to its Advanced Oncology Solutions unit, which provides professional and clinical services to improve the implementation of its technologies. Dive Insight Varian, a provider of radiation oncology equipment and software, pitches its AOS unit as enabling sites to adopt technologies, improve quality and expand capacity. The unit collaborates with radiation oncology sites to simplify data entry, optimize databases, reduce variation between dosimetrists and train staff on safety. In doing so, Varian aims to address challenges such as the rising cost of care and staff shortages. “Through our AOS offerings, ...
Moderna and Immatics have announced a collaboration agreement aimed at developing ‘novel and innovative’ cancer therapies, with the deal potentially worth over $1.7bn. The multi-platform partnership will combine Moderna’s mRNA technology with Immatics’s T-cell receptor platform and cover various therapeutic modalities such as bispecifics, cell therapies and cancer vaccines. The companies outlined in a statement that their research will focus on three main pillars, including applying the mRNA technology for in vivo expression of Immatics’s half-life extended TCR bispecifics (TCER) targeting cancer-specific HLA-presented peptides. They will also leverage Moderna’s mRNA experience alongside Immatics’s tumour and normal tissue data included in its Xpresident target discovery platform and Xcube bioinformatics and AI platform to develop mRNA-based cancer vaccines, as well as evaluate Immatics’s IMA203 TCR-T therapy targeting preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma (PRAME) in combination with Moderna’s investigational PRAME mRNA-based cancer vaccine. Under the terms of the agreement, Immatics will receive an ...
Seagen and Nurix Therapeutics have entered into a multi-year, multi-target strategic collaboration agreement worth more than $3.4bn, to advance a new class of medicines for use in cancer. The companies will work to combine antibody-drug conjugation (ADC) and targeted protein degradation (TPD), aiming to create drugs with new mechanisms of action and improve specificity and anti-cancer activity. Under the terms of the agreement, Seagen will provide an upfront payment of $60m to Nurix, with the potential to receive up to approximately $3.4bn in research, development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments across multiple programmes, as well as mid-single to low double-digit tiered royalties on future sales. As part of the collaboration, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Nurix will utilise its proprietary DELigase platform to develop targeted protein degraders against multiple targets nominated by Seagen that are suitable for antibody conjugation. Seagen will conjugate these degraders to antibodies to make a new class of ...
Coherus BioSciences has concluded the acquisition of clinical-stage immuno-oncology (I-O) company Surface Oncology in a deal totalling nearly $66.9m. The deal value comprises $40m, along with Surface’s net cash at deal closing of $26.9m. Surface Oncology focuses on the development of immunotherapies that act on the microenvironment of the tumour. With the deal closing, Surface became a completely owned Coherus subsidiary. Following the takeover, Coherus expanded its I-O pipeline by adding clinical-stage antibody immunotherapy candidates of Surface, Casdozokitug (SRF388 / casdozo) and CHS-114 (SRF114). These product candidates can boost the innate and adaptive immune responses to facilitate a strong immunologic response and disease outcomes in cancer patients. Casdozokitug is a new antibody targeting IL-27 and is presently being analysed in Phase I/II clinical trials for lung and liver cancer. An anti-CCR8 antibody, CHS-114 is being evaluated in Phase I/II study as a single agent in advanced solid tumour patients. Coherus ...
More than 1,300 oncology drugs are in the development pipeline, waiting to potentially embark on the long journey toward their commercial debut. This journey is usually an arduous one, made even more difficult by the mere 6% participation rate in clinical trials among adult cancer patients in the U.S. To help tackle this issue, OneOncology — a cancer center network that TPG and AmerisourceBergen bought for $2.1 billion in June — recently announced that it is deploying Verily’s clinical trial management software platform across 11 of its community oncology clinics. Verily’s platform, called SignalPath, was designed with the intention of making providers’ complex clinical research ecosystems more manageable. It does this by converting trial protocols from PDFs to automated workflows, enabling centralized site and study management, and facilitating communication across site stakeholders. SignalPath also produces real-time metrics on performance and finances that users can turn into actionable insights. “As a ...
By Connor Lynch Pictured: Doctor holding up hand to stop, courtesy of iStock Clinical-stage oncology company ALX Oncology is dropping trials for two of its anti-CD47 programs after disappointing efficacy findings. In its second-quarter earnings report on Thursday, the San Francisco-based company announced an end to its ASPEN-02 and ASPEN-05 programs, which were evaluating the efficacy of its CD47-inhibitor evorpacept. The protein works by binding to receptors on cancer cells that can potentially enhance the action of both chemotherapy drugs, as well as the body’s natural immune response. The two programs were assessing the effectiveness of evorpacept in concert with chemotherapy drugs to treat myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia, respectively. Initial findings were promising. The combination of evorpacept and chemotherapy drugs—Bristol Myer Squibb’s azacitidine and AbbVie and Genentech’s venetoclax—proved more effective in combination than apart in early trials for myelodysplastic syndrome, as well as acute myeloid leukemia. However, later ...
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