The Dutch biotech Synaf­fix has been ac­tive on the deal front for the past few years. And it’s not show­ing signs of stop­ping, hit­ting the ground run­ning in 2023 by ink­ing a deal with Sin­ga­pore’s Hum­ming­bird Bio­science.

In an an­nounce­ment Mon­day, Hum­ming­bird and the an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate biotech said they will en­ter in­to a li­cens­ing agree­ment, open­ing the door for Hum­ming­bird to de­vel­op an ADC pro­gram us­ing Synaf­fix’s tech­nol­o­gy.

Synaf­fix will be el­i­gi­ble for up to $150 mil­lion, which in­cludes both an up­front and mile­stone pay­ment plus roy­al­ties on net sales. Hum­ming­bird, mean­while, will get the rights to use Synaf­fix’s ADC tech­nolo­gies, one of which us­es gly­cans as an an­chor­ing point in an­ti­bod­ies while the oth­er ex­tends the drugs’ half-lives. The biotech the­o­rizes they can then re­move them to cre­ate space for the drug pay­load.

In a state­ment from Hum­ming­bird CEO Piers In­gram, the com­pa­ny plans to com­bine the tech­nolo­gies from Synaf­fix with its ef­forts in gen­er­at­ing an­ti­bod­ies on its RAD, or ra­tio­nal an­ti­body dis­cov­ery plat­form.

How­ev­er, no de­tails on the can­di­date or when the deal would close were pro­vid­ed. End­points News reached out to Hum­ming­bird for more in­for­ma­tion.

“By com­bin­ing our cut­ting-edge ADC tech­nol­o­gy plat­form with Hum­ming­bird Bio’s next-gen­er­a­tion port­fo­lio of pre­ci­sion ther­a­peu­tics we can fur­ther con­tribute to­wards the trans­for­ma­tion of can­cer treat­ment.” Synaf­fix CEO Pe­ter van de Sande said in a state­ment.

This is not the first ef­fort by Synaf­fix to li­cense out its tech­nol­o­gy. In Feb­ru­ary of last year, the biotech signed a deal with Macro­Gen­ics for $586 mil­lion in up­front and mile­stone pay­ments across the three pro­grams and was el­i­gi­ble for roy­al­ties on com­mer­cial sales.

In 2021, Synaf­fix al­so signed a deal with Ky­owa Kirin and in 2019, it al­so se­cured a $125 mil­lion li­cens­ing pact with Chi­na’s Miraco­gen.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

US regulators cleared an ultra-rare drug from Pharming Group, by way of Novartis, on Friday afternoon.

The Dutch biotech said the FDA greenlit leniolisib for an immunodeficiency disease known as activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase delta (PI3Kδ) syndrome, or APDS. People 12 years and older can receive the oral drug, to be marketed as Joenja, beginning early next month, Pharming said, five days ahead of the decision deadline set by the FDA as part of a priority review.