Roche signs two deals worth about $3.5B in one day
Roche signed two research partnerships on Sept. 24: one with Atavistik Bio to discover drugs for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases, and another with Earendil Labs to develop cancer antibodies. Together, the agreements have a potential value of more than $3.47 billion (€3.05 billion). Roche is paying $125 million (€110 million) upfront.
Atavistik: Roche will pay the Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech $70 million (€62 million) upfront, with up to $1.9 billion (€1.67 billion) in research, development and commercial milestones, plus royalties. Atavistik will use its AMPS platform to find binding pockets on proteins and design small molecules against several disease targets. Roche will take over further preclinical development, clinical trials and commercialization.
- The deal takes Atavistik’s discovery platform beyond its own focus on rare blood diseases. Its lead drug, ATV-1601, is in a Phase 1/2 trial for hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, a condition that causes abnormal blood vessels. Atavistik raised $160 million (€141 million) in its Series B financing and also has a research partnership with Pfizer.
Earendil: Roche’s Genentech unit will pay $55 million (€48 million) upfront to work with the Delaware-based biotech on multiple bispecific antibodies for cancer. The agreement is worth more than $1.5 billion (€1.32 billion) if its development, regulatory and sales milestones are met, with royalties on top. Earendil will lead discovery, research and early clinical development; Genentech will handle later global development and commercialization. The companies have not disclosed the target combinations.
- Earendil says its platform combines AI-based protein design with rapid experimental testing. It has already partnered with Sanofi on bispecific antibodies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, and said in March that it had raised $787 million (€692 million) across financing rounds.
The big picture: These are Roche’s fourth and fifth announced biotech agreements in less than a month. Since Aug. 28, Genentech has partnered with DualityBio on antibody-drug conjugates, Roche has licensed Simcere Zaiming’s trispecific antibody for B-cell diseases, and it has struck a separate bispecific discovery deal with Dualitas Therapeutics for inflammatory diseases.
- The five deals carry more than $7 billion (€6.2 billion) in combined potential value, against $281.5 million (€248 million) in disclosed upfront payments. In four weeks, Roche has added three antibody partnerships, one antibody-drug conjugate collaboration and Atavistik’s small-molecule platform to its external pipeline search.
