BioNTech and Duality Biologics have expanded their existing agreement to include a third antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) for solid tumours.
The companies announced the first deal covering two ADCs in April this year. Under the terms of the agreement, DualityBio would receive upfront payments totalling $170m and be eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of potentially more than $1.5bn.
ADCs are a class of potent cancer therapies combining the selectivity of antibodies with the potent cell-killing properties of chemotherapy or other anti-cancer agents.
Unlike chemotherapy, which works by attacking lots of different cells as well as the cancer, ADCs are designed to target and kill tumour cells while sparing healthy cells.
Professor Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer and co-founder of BioNTech, said at the time of the first announcement: “Over the last years, the ADC field has made significant progress, overcoming several limitations and demonstrating its potential as a broadly applicable precision medicine drug class that might be an alternative to standard chemotherapy.”
The initial collaboration gave BioNTech access to DualityBio’s lead candidate, DB-1303, which targets HER2-expressing solid tumours. DB-1303 has already received Fast Track designation from the US Food and Drug Administration and is currently in a phase 2 clinical trial.
The second ADC candidate, DB-1311, is yet to enter human studies but has demonstrated “potent antitumour activity in a range of tumour models representing multiple cancer types and has been well tolerated in preclinical studies”, the companies said.
The latest candidate to be included in the contract is DB-1305, a third generation Trop2 ADC molecule that has also shown “potent antitumour activity” in preclinical tumour models and “robust” clinical efficacy in NSCLC and other solid tumours.
DualityBio will receive upfront payments, additional development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, and single-digit to low-double digit tiered royalties on net sales of DB-1305.
In line with the existing partnership, BioNTech will hold commercial rights for the asset globally, while DualityBio will retain commercial rights for Mainland China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macau Special Administrative Region.
The transaction comes just days after BioNTech said it had completed its previously announced acquisition of UK AI start-up InstaDeep for approximately €500m.
The company outlined in January that the acquisition supported its strategy to “build capabilities in AI-driven drug discovery and development of next-generation immunotherapies and vaccines to address diseases with high unmet medical need”.