Gilead Sciences and Merus have announced a new oncology partnership worth over $1.5bn to discover dual tumour-associated antigens targeting trispecific antibodies.
The collaboration combines Gilead’s oncology capabilities with Merus’ Triclonics platform, which “provides the unique opportunity to design antibodies capable of simultaneously binding to three targets at once,” according to the companies.
Flavius Martin, executive vice president, research at Gilead, said the company was “excited to explore the potential of Merus’ differentiated Triclonics platform to discover and advance transformative new cancer therapies”.
Under the terms of the agreement, Merus will lead early-stage research activities for two programmes, with the potential for a third. If Gilead exercises its right to licence any resulting programmes, it will be responsible for additional research, development and commercialisation activities.
In exchange, Merus will receive an upfront cash payment of $56m for initial targets and a $25m equity investment from Gilead, with the company also eligible for up to $1.5bn in milestone payments across all the potential programmes and tiered royalties.
For the third potential programme, Merus can opt-in to share an equal split of net profits and losses rather than future milestone and royalty payments.
Martin said: “We have seen the successful application of bispecific antibodies as an immune-modulating modality used to treat cancer.
“We are now looking ahead to the development of additional multispecific antibodies capable of driving robust anti-tumour immune responses with an improved efficacy and safety profile.”
Also commenting on the alliance, Hui Liu, executive vice president, chief business officer and head of Merus US, said: “We are grateful for our collaborations which represent opportunities for Merus to leverage our research capabilities to pursue innovative biology and to address significant unmet medical needs.”
Liu added that the company’s collaboration with Gilead represents the first of its Triclonics platform.
The announcement comes less than one month after Gilead said it would be acquiring CymaBay Therapeutics for $4.3bn, marking a significant boost to its liver disease pipeline.
The deal gives the company access to CymaBay’s lead experimental candidate currently being evaluated as a treatment for primary biliary cholangitis, a rare cholestatic liver disease affecting approximately 130,000 people in the US.