Under the partnership, both parties will discover novel small molecule drugs using Orionis’s Allo-Glue platform for challenging targets in key disease areas, including oncology and neurodegeneration
Genentech’s building in South San Francisco, California, US. (Credit: Coolcaesar from Wikimedia Commons)
American life sciences company Orionis Biosciences has signed a multi-year collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to discover and develop molecular glue class medicines.
Under the partnership, both parties will discover novel small molecule drugs for challenging targets in key disease areas, including oncology and neurodegeneration.
Orionis will use its Allo-Glue platform to find small molecule monovalent glues.
According to the terms of the agreement, US-based Genentech will oversee later-stage preclinical and clinical development, regulatory filing, and commercialisation of such small molecules, while the life sciences firm will oversee the discovery and optimisation of molecular glues for Genentech’s chosen targets.
Orionis will get a $47m upfront payment, and it will be eligible for development milestone payments, and commercial and net sales milestone payments that could total more than $2bn.
It will also get a tiered royalty upon the sale of products developed in collaboration.
Orionis Biosciences co-founder and CEO Nikolai Kley said: “We are thrilled to collaborate with Genentech, a company long known for its world-class science and trailblazing medicines, to make use of technological innovations that we have systematically evolved over the past years to unlock novel target space with such drug modalities.”
With its Allo-Glue technology, Orionis can find drug-like small compounds that can target illness targets that have eluded standard discovery methods.
The platform combines several in-house chemical biology technologies, such as biological assays, computational analyses, chemical libraries, and automated processes.
According to the life science firm, Allo-Glue enables high-throughput discovery, rational design, and optimisation of small molecules that facilitate or induce protein interactions in living cells.
Roche Pharma Partnering global head James Sabry said: “Molecular glue degraders are an exciting modality to target disease-related proteins that have proven challenging with more traditional treatment modalities.
“For patients with unmet needs, this offers a new therapeutic approach to modulate major disease drivers. This collaboration enables us to apply the concept of targeted protein degradation to discover and develop medicines for patients with serious and life-threatening diseases.”