Novartis and PeptiDream have expanded their peptide discovery collaboration with a new agreement worth over $2.8bn.
The multi-programme agreement will see PeptiDream use its proprietary Peptide Discovery Platform System technology to identify and optimise macrocyclic peptides against targets chosen by Novartis.
These peptides will then be conjugated to radionuclides, which Novartis refers to as ‘radioligand therapies (RLTs)’, or other applications for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes.
In exchange, PeptiDream will receive an upfront payment of $180m and will be eligible to receive up to $2.71bn in future milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties.
The deal expands Novartis and PeptiDream’s peptide-drug conjugate (PDC) collaboration announced in 2019 and builds on the partners’ ongoing discovery efforts, originally initiated in 2010.
Shiva Malek, global head of oncology research at Novartis, said: “We are enthusiastic about the progress we’ve made with PeptiDream through our long-standing research collaboration and look forward to continuing our work together as we strive to create impactful new therapies for patients.
“Our expanded partnership reflects our shared commitment to pioneering science that broadens the scope of transformative therapeutic approaches such as RLT.”
Similarly to antibody-drug conjugates, PDCs are designed to deliver drugs to cancer cells while sparing healthy tissues.
PeptiDream’s chief executive officer, Patrick Reid, said: “We are delighted to further expand our long-standing macrocyclic peptide discovery collaboration with Novartis, adding additional peptide RLT and other programmes to our strong partnership.
“As macrocyclic peptides continue to be the ideal vectors for the targeted delivery of a variety of therapeutic payloads, PeptiDream continues to build an extensive pipeline of partnered as well as internal peptide-conjugate programmes.”
The partnership comes less than three weeks after Novartis entered into an exclusive licence agreement worth over $1bn for the development and commercialisation of Arvinas’ clinical-stage prostate cancer therapy.
The candidate, ARV-766, is a second-generation androgen receptor (AR) degrader that has demonstrated activity in models of wild-type AR tumours and tumours with AR mutations or amplification.
Novartis also recently announced that it would be acquiring MorphoSys for €2.7bn, marking a significant boost to the drugmaker’s oncology pipeline.