The partnership involves three separate multi-year collaborations, which allow Tentarix to receive a total of $66m in upfront payments and an equity investment and Gilead can acquire three Tentarix subsidiaries at a price of $80m per subsidiary
Gilead enters three collaborations with Tentarix. (Credit: Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay)
US-based biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences has teamed up with Tentarix Biotherapeutics to leverage the latter’s Tentacles platform.
The partnership involves three separate multi-year collaborations between the companies.
The three collaborations will allow Tentarix to receive a total of $66m in upfront payments and an equity investment from Gilead.
Also, Gilead will be provided with an option to acquire up to three select Tentarix subsidiaries holding the programs developed under the collaborations at a purchase price of $80m per subsidiary.
Gilead Sciences research executive vice president Flavius Martin said: “At Gilead, a key area of our research strategy is addressing immune dysregulation in oncology and inflammatory diseases.
“This early-stage collaboration with Tentarix will be highly synergistic to our ongoing efforts, building upon our growing strength in protein therapeutics, and may provide access to next-generation, multi-specific biologics.”
The collaborations will leverage Tentarix’s Tentacles platform to discover and develop multi-functional, conditional protein therapeutics for oncology and inflammatory diseases.
The therapeutic molecules will be designed to conditionally target immune cells related to disease pathways without activating other immune cells.
In addition, the molecules will prevent adverse events and enhance both therapeutic benefit and safety, said the biopharmaceutical company.
Tentarix Biotherapeutics president and CEO Paul Grayson said: “This collaboration is part of our strategy to join forces with innovators, like Gilead, who can help us rapidly advance new medicines to the clinic.
“Our technology has great promise and collaborating with Gilead to build out this pipeline helps broaden the development of multi-functional, antibody-based therapeutics, providing an excellent mechanism to validate our science with the ultimate goal of bringing these potential medicines to patients faster.”
Last month, Gilead partnered with Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and Penta ID network to boost treatment adherence in children with HIV, in low and middle-income nations.
The partnership with CHAI enables the development of an investigational dispersible paediatric formulation, which has emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide (F/TAF).
Penta’s partnership is aimed to develop investigational paediatric formulations of TAF and sofosbuvir (SOF) to remove bitterness.