Roche’s Genentech unit and Repertoire Immune Medicines have entered into a partnership worth $765m to discover and develop T cell-targeted immune medicines for an undisclosed autoimmune disease.
The collaboration and licence agreement centres around Repertoire’s DECODE platform, which will be used to generate target discoveries that Genentech will further optimise and translate into new drugs.
Autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, affect more than 50 million people in the US. They occur when the immune system is unable to distinguish between healthy cells and invading pathogens.
Repertoire’s platform is designed to map the immune synapse, offering a comprehensive overview of the interactions between T cell receptors and their cognate antigenic epitopes.
Boris Zaïtra, head of Roche corporate business development, said: “As we seek new opportunities to bring an even greater impact to patients, we look forward to translating the new discoveries DECODE and the team at Repertoire will reveal to develop novel medicines for patients suffering from autoimmune diseases.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Repertoire will lead target discovery activities using its platform, while Genentech will take on responsibility for preclinical and clinical development, as well as global commercialisation of therapies utilising the target discovery work.
In exchange, the Flagship Pioneering-founded biotech will be eligible to receive $35m upfront and up to $730m in development, regulatory and commercial milestones, plus tiered royalties.
“The enormous breadth of DECODE’s therapeutic target discovery potential is well beyond what we could realise on our own,” said Torben Straight Nissen, chairman and chief executive officer of Repertoire, and executive partner at Flagship Pioneering.
“Given Genentech’s commitment and experience… in developing treatments for autoimmune diseases, we are delighted to partner with them to bring medicines to patients that reset the immune system and have the potential to provide significant therapeutic benefits,” he added.
The collaboration comes just one month after Roche entered into a partnership worth over $1bn with Oxford BioTherapeutics to discover new antibody-based therapeutics for cancer.
Roche also announced an exclusive collaboration and licensing agreement with Zealand Pharma in March to advance Zealand’s mid-stage obesity candidate petrelintide, and gained exclusive global rights to Innovent Biologics’ DLL3-targeted antibody drug conjugate candidate in January.