The partnership will combine Monte Rosa’s highly differentiated QuEEN discovery engine with Roche’s expertise in providing transformative therapies to patients
Monte Rosa has entered collaboration with Roche. (Credit: Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay)
Monte Rosa Therapeutics and healthcare firm Roche have inked a strategic collaboration and licencing deal to discover and develop cancer and neurological diseases-targeting molecular glue degraders (MGDs).
The partnership will combine Monte Rosa’s highly differentiated QuEEN (Quantitative and Engineered Elimination of Neosubstrates) discovery engine with Roche’s expertise in providing transformative therapies to patients.
Under the contract, Monte Rosa, which develops MGD-based medicines, will receive a $50m upfront payment.
The biotechnology company is eligible to receive additional tiered royalties and preclinical, clinical, commercial, and sales milestone payments totalling up to $2bn in the future.
Monte Rosa CEO Markus Warmuth said: “Our QuEEN discovery engine, a highly validated and industry-leading molecular glue degrader platform, has been the cornerstone for Monte Rosa’s success, driving the discovery and development of our exquisitely selective MGDs successfully into the clinic.
“This collaboration will enable and accelerate the expansion of our platform into neuroscience and additional areas of oncology.
“We believe our decision to partner with Roche, a company that shares our vision and drive, will amplify our collective strengths and capabilities to accelerate the development of transformative treatments for patients across several indications.”
Both parties also settled on a plan for growing their cooperation on multiple targets in the first two years.
In that situation, additional payments for milestones related to nomination, preclinical, clinical, commercial and sales, as well as tier-based royalties on the resulting products, are due.
Until a certain point, Monte Rosa Therapeutics will take the lead in preclinical and discovery efforts against several chosen cancer and neurological illness targets.
The healthcare major will have the exclusive right to continue preclinical and clinical research on the substances while the biotechnology firm retains full ownership of its pipeline programmes.
Roche Pharma Partnering Global Head James Sabry said: “We believe that molecular glue degraders are a powerful new class of small molecules that target disease-related proteins that traditional approaches have been unable to address.
“Together with Monte Rosa, we look forward to tackling high-value targets in both oncology and neuroscience with the goal of unlocking new therapeutic possibilities.”