Roche and Innovent unite in $2bn biospecifics deal
Swiss healthcare company Roche has partnered with Chinese biotech Innovent Biologics to develop cell therapies and bispecific antibodies.
The deal, which was announced earlier this week, will focus on the discovery, clinical development and commercialisation of bispecific antibodies and multiple cell therapies to the treatment of haematological and solid cancers.
Innovent will pay upfront to access Roche technologies that enable the discovery and development of specific 2:1 T-cell bispecific antibodies and Roche’s CAR-T platform.
Roche will retain the option to license each product for development and commercialisation outside of China.
If Roche chooses to exercise all of its options, it will pay option exercise payments totalling $140 million. If all products are successfully developed and commercialised, Roche will pay additional development, approval, and sales milestone payments up to $1.96 billion.
Michael Yu, founder, chairman and CEO of Innovent, said “Innovent first entered the cellular therapy space a few years ago, and with this partnership with Roche we are taking a much bolder step forward as we build upon Roche's novel, universal CAR-T cell technology to enhance our cellular therapy discovery platform, and on Roche's 2:1 T-cell bispecific antibody platform for selected targets to discover, develop, and commercialise new proprietary bispecific molecules.”
Innovent has previously partnered with Eli Lilly, Incyte, and MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Eli Lilly entered into a collaboration in 2015 with the Chinese biotech, to co-develop at least three experimental cancer drugs. The partnership resulted in the development and approval in China of Tyvyt (sintilimab).
Late last year, Tyvyt was one of 70 medicines added to the country’s national medical insurance catalogue, which aims to reduce the cost of the drugs by more than 60% on average.
At the time, He Shiwen, an employee at Innovent, said the price of Tyvyt has been reduced by 64%. "Even before the price cut, Tyvyt was significantly cheaper than its counterparts available on the Chinese market. The medication is now even more affordable for patients," he said.
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