Bris­tol My­ers takes next big gam­ble on I/O fron­tier, pledg­ing near­ly $1.4B on Texas fir­m's tu­mor tox­ins

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb has made sev­er­al deals in im­muno-on­col­o­gy re­cent­ly, look­ing for po­ten­tial fol­low-ups to its block­buster drug Op­di­vo. And on Thurs­day, they made their lat­est play in­to the space, back­ing a small Texas biotech with a cou­ple of big-name back­ers.

BMS has agreed to a “mul­ti-tar­get” on­col­o­gy col­lab­o­ra­tion with Austin-based Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates, the com­pa­nies an­nounced Thurs­day morn­ing. The deal pays the biotech $70 mil­lion up­front with up to $1.3 bil­lion avail­able in mile­stone pay­ments, in ad­di­tion to roy­al­ties on fu­ture sales. BMS has al­ready se­lect­ed the first tar­get.

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