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Roche will pay Zymeworks $55 million upfront plus another $40 million once the partnership asset enters Phase 1b development and up to $718 million in additional milestones.
Aside from RG6540, Roche also discontinued a host of other early-stage assets, including an antisense oligonucleotide for Alzheimer’s disease and a small-molecule candidate for geographic atrophy.
Roche is offering $400 million upfront and over $15 billion in biobucks to team up with Hansoh Pharmaceutical in hopes of developing a portfolio of new antibody-drug conjugates using the latter’s in-house tech.
While GLP-1 medicines have become synonymous with weight loss, at least one expert thinks amylin would have been the go-to target if biopharma had been focused on the blockbuster indication 10 years ago. A new wave of therapies is now exploring this potentially gentler mechanism.
Roche has gained access to a genetic obesity approach from China’s Rona Therapeutics for up to $100 million in upfront and near-term payments.
For the second time in a week, Zealand Pharma’s weight loss pipeline has delivered mixed results, this time in a Phase 2 trial for the Roche-partnered asset petrelintide.
After a series of clinical-stage failures, Alector is resetting around its preclinical blood-brain barrier delivery technology, securing a big pharma partnership along the way.
Roche’s anti-myostatin therapy emugrobart is unlikely to elicit meaningful weight loss, according to an interim mid-stage analysis, prompting the pharma to return the asset rights to its subsidiary Chugai Pharmaceutical.
Genentech’s agreement with Earendil Labs came the same day its parent company, Roche, inked a cardiometabolic and renal deal with Atavistik Bio for up to $2 billion.
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