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.

Adam Cut­ler

The com­pa­nies are not, how­ev­er, dis­clos­ing how many tar­gets BMS can op­tion in­to, Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates CFO Adam Cut­ler told End­points News in an email. But Cut­ler said the agree­ment does not in­volve any of the biotech’s ex­ist­ing pro­grams, and there is no over­lap be­tween Thurs­day’s deal and its pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions with Take­da and Ver­tex.

News of the agree­ment ap­peared to de­light in­vestors, with Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates $MTEM shares spik­ing about 12% in ear­ly Thurs­day trad­ing.

Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates has been work­ing on a plat­form called en­gi­neered tox­in bod­ies, or ETBs, which use ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered ver­sions of the Shi­ga-like Tox­in A sub­unit to try to treat can­cer. They go af­ter can­cer cells and al­so add anti­gens in­to the can­cer cells them­selves, help­ing prime the im­mune sys­tem to tar­get them for de­struc­tion.

Their lead pro­gram, MT-3724, is cur­rent­ly in an on­go­ing Phase II study in the most com­mon form of non-Hodgkin lym­phoma. It’s tar­get­ing CD20 as a monother­a­py in the re­lapsed/re­frac­to­ry set­ting, and in sep­a­rate com­bi­na­tions with chemo and the for­mer Cel­gene block­buster Revlim­id in ear­li­er lines of treat­ment.

The can­di­date, which is the com­pa­ny’s “first-gen­er­a­tion” ETB, has spurred some safe­ty wor­ries among in­vestors, ac­cord­ing to Stifel’s Stephen Wil­ley. But the breadth of Thurs­day’s deal pro­vides some com­fort that the pro­grams fur­ther down the pipeline won’t have as many con­cerns.

“We hate to use the term ‘val­i­da­tion’ when speak­ing to (busi­ness de­vel­op­ment) ac­tiv­i­ty,” Wil­ley wrote to in­vestors, “but we be­lieve this deal reads well for the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion plat­form tech­nol­o­gy.”

That would in­clude Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates’ oth­er two pro­grams cur­rent­ly in Phase I stud­ies. First there’s MT-5111, which the com­pa­ny says specif­i­cal­ly binds and kills HER2 ex­press­ing cells, which is be­ing eval­u­at­ed in mul­ti­ple sol­id tu­mors. Then there’s a Take­da-part­nered pro­gram in TAK-169 that goes af­ter cells ex­press­ing CD38, which is be­ing stud­ied in mul­ti­ple myelo­ma.

Back in Sep­tem­ber 2018, Take­da forked over $30 mil­lion up­front for the part­ner­ship and promised mile­stones that could add up to $632.5 mil­lion. Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates is plan­ning on pro­vid­ing “strate­gic clar­i­ty” on MT-3724 in the first half of 2021, Wil­ley wrote, with dose-es­ca­la­tion da­ta ex­pect­ed for MT-5111 in the same time­frame.

For BMS, Thurs­day’s deal is an­oth­er in a long line of I/O plays. The phar­ma spent $475 mil­lion up­front to part­ner with Drag­on­fly on an IL-12 pro­gram, and snapped up the biotech For­bius in a deal cen­tered around a TGF-be­ta pro­gram. Both moves oc­curred last Au­gust.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

S&P Global has taken a look at the dominant forces shaping the pharma market and come to the conclusion that there will be more downgrades than upgrades in 2021 — the 8th straight year of steady decline.

But it’s not all bad news. Some things are looking up, and there’s still plenty of money to be made in an industry that enjoys a 30% to 40% profit margin, once you factor in steep R&D expenses.

In the search for a better Covid-19 therapeutic, GlaxoSmithKline and Vir have partnered up on two antibodies they hope have a chance. GSK is also testing its own in-house antibody, and early results may have shut the door on its widespread use.

A combination of GSK’s monoclonal antibody otilimab plus standard of care couldn’t best standard of care alone in preventing death and respiratory failure in hospitalized Covid-19 patients after 28 days, according to data from the Phase IIa OSCAR study unveiled Thursday.