BridGene strikes another partnership with Takeda as the latter company continues its dealmaking streak, following high-ticket agreements with Keros Therapeutics, AC Immune and Degron Therapeutics in the past nine months.
Takeda deepened its relationship with BridGene Biosciences with another licensing deal geared toward developing novel small-molecule drugs against “challenging” immunology and neurology targets.
Under the agreement, announced Tuesday, Takeda is forking over $46 million in a combined upfront and potential preclinical milestone payment and is pledging additional clinical and commercial milestones. Taken together, these payments could result in a deal value of up to $770 million. BridGene will also be entitled to tiered royalties on net sales of any product that comes out of the partnership.
In return, Takeda will gain access to BridGene’s proprietary IMTAC platform, which takes a chemoproteomic approach to drug design and discovery, allowing the biotech to develop molecules that can hit “traditionally undruggable targets,” according to Tuesday’s news release.
Takeda will have exclusive rights over assets that come out of the collaboration and will be responsible for taking those molecules through clinical development, as well as taking charge of regulatory and commercial activities. The larger biopharma company will work collaboratively with BridGene through hit-finding and preclinical development.
The partners have yet to reveal specific priority indications.
Takeda and BridGene’s relationship stretches back to March 2021, when the companies first joined hands to start up to five drug discovery programs, likewise leveraging the biotech’s IMTAC platform. Just like the new deal, the companies at the time didn’t specify which therapeutic areas they were targeting, only revealing that they would be going after targets that were deemed “undruggable.”
The partnership has moved forward consistently over the years, with BridGene in 2023 announcing that it had hit two milestones under the contract.
Tuesday’s BridGene contract continues a dealmaking streak for Takeda, which in December 2024 paid $200 million upfront for Keros Therapeutics’ blood cancer-related anemia drug elritercept. The agreement, which would give the Japanese multinational a competitor to Bristol Myers Squibb’s Reblozyl, also includes milestones that have the potential to go above $1.1 billion.
Months earlier, in May 2024, Takeda signed two deals: one with AC Immune and its Alzheimer’s disease hopeful for up to $2.2 billion and a separate potential $1.2 billion contract with Chinese biotech Degron Therapeutics for molecular glue degraders.
