Roche is digging deeper into the biotech industry in China, striking a new partnership with a drug startup there. But rather than licensing the startup’s clinical-stage medicines, Roche is enlisting it to discover new ones, signaling a potential shift in global drug development.
Chinese startup Defand Therapeutics said Thursday that it had signed a collaboration deal with Roche to develop molecular glue medicines. Under the deal, Defand will discover and develop multiple drugs for cancer and immune-driven diseases. The financial terms were not disclosed, but a source with knowledge of the agreement said it could be worth close to $1 billion between the upfront fee and payments Defand could get if it meets various preclinical, clinical, and regulatory goals.
Molecular glue therapies are a buzzy new area of drug development, designed to create a sticky, more effective connection onto problematic proteins to destroy them. Development of these drugs has just begun to accelerate, thanks in large part to the data from Revolution Medicines, showing its molecular glue treatment Rasonque nearly doubled the survival rate of patients with pancreatic cancer.
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