Swedish biotech Alligator Bioscience has agreed to sell its CD40-targeting cancer immunotherapy mitazalimab to Canadian drug developer Biossil for $750,000 (€670,000) upfront, with up to $108 million (€97 million) in contingent milestones and additional royalties. The deal follows Alligator’s decision in July to discontinue independent development of the drug and concentrate its resources on another oncology program.
Denmark’s Genmab said adding its bispecific antibody petosemtamab to MSD’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) cut the risk of death by 50% versus Keytruda alone in a Phase 3 trial in first-line, PD-L1-positive recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer. The interim result is the first randomized evidence for the lead asset of Genmab’s $8 billion takeover of Dutch biotech Merus last year.
Swiss big pharma Roche has agreed to license ZW209, an experimental cancer immunotherapy from Vancouver-based Zymeworks, for $55 million upfront and up to $758 million more in conditional payments, plus royalties on future sales. The agreement returns Roche to DLL3, a lung cancer target it previously pursued with a different antibody.
Switzerland’s Roche has discontinued RG6540, an experimental off-the-shelf CAR-T therapy targeting the CD19 and CD20 proteins, less than two years after agreeing to acquire its developer, Poseida Therapeutics, for up to $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion). Roche has not explained the reasons for the decision, but CEO Thomas Schinecker told reporters that the acquisition had yielded other CD19/CD20 candidates he considers superior.
Italy’s Menarini Group will pay Maryland biotech Georgiamune $45 million (€40 million) in upfront and near-term payments, in a deal worth up to $1.1 billion (€1.0 billion) plus royalties, for worldwide rights to an oral cancer immunotherapy that has yet to enter human trials.
Sprint Bioscience AB has sold its preclinical TREX1 first-in-class cancer program to Gilead for up to US$414m, validating its fragment-driven small-molecule out-licensing business model.
Swedish immunoncology specialist Anocca AB has raised SEK440m (€38.36m) ahead of enrolling pancreatic cancer patients in a Phase I umbrella trial evaluating the safety of its T-cell receptor-engineered T cell (TCR-T) programmes ANOC-001, ANOC-002 and ANOC-003.
Pilatus Biosciences AG, a Swiss biotechnology company headquartered in Epalinges with operations in the United States and South Korea, has entered into a clinical trial collaboration with Roche AG. As part of the agreement, Roche will provide its PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab for use in a Phase I study evaluating the combination of atezolizumab with Pilatus’s investigational CD36 inhibitor, PLT012, in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
IO Biotech has published top-line results from its pivotal Phase 3 trial evaluating the therapeutic cancer vaccine IO102-IO103 (Cylembio) in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced melanoma. While the combination achieved a notable improvement in progression-free survival (PFS), the study narrowly missed its predefined statistical threshold for significance.
Gilead Science
Anocca AB
Pilatus Biosciences
IO Biotech