Roche’s Genentech has agreed to pay Regor Pharmaceuticals $850m upfront to acquire the biotech’s portfolio of next-generation CDK inhibitors for breast cancer.
Under the terms of the definitive purchase agreement, Genentech will be responsible for clinical development, manufacturing and commercialisation worldwide, while Regor will continue to manage two ongoing phase 1 trials to their completion.
In addition to the upfront fee, Regor will be eligible to receive cash payments based on the achievement of certain predetermined development, regulatory and commercial milestones.
Regor’s founder and chief executive officer, Xiayang Qiu, said: “Genentech is well-positioned to bring these novel therapeutics to their full potential to benefit patients with breast cancer around the world. We are proud of the strong data we have generated to date.”
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, where approximately 56,800 new cases of the disease are diagnosed every year.
Regor shared promising results from a phase 1a trial of its next generation CDK4 inhibitor in December last year. The candidate, RGT-419B, was shown to be safe and well-tolerated across 12 patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who had progressed on CDK4/6 inhibitors and endocrine therapy, and demonstrated single agent efficacy.
Qiu said at the time of the announcement: “With the favourable safety profile and promising monotherapy efficacy, RGT-419B has best-in-class potential as a single agent or in combination in HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients resistant to CDK4/6 inhibitors, and in earlier lines of treatments.
“Clinical studies of single agent dose expansion and combination of RGT-419B with endocrine therapy are underway.”
The deal comes less than two months after Genentech entered into a licence agreement worth over $1.9m with Sangamo Therapeutics to develop intravenously-administered genomic medicines for neurodegenerative diseases.
The company also entered into a multi-year collaboration and licence agreement with GenEdit in January worth up to $644m to discover and develop novel nanoparticles to deliver its genetic medicines for autoimmune diseases.