Kro­nos and Genen­tech ink $20M can­cer dis­cov­ery pact

Kro­nos Bio and Roche’s Genen­tech an­nounced a drug dis­cov­ery deal to hunt for and de­vel­op small mol­e­cule drugs aimed at tran­scrip­tion fac­tors that can dri­ve the pro­lif­er­a­tion of can­cer.

Un­der the two-pro­gram agree­ment, Kro­nos will get $20 mil­lion up­front, plus as much as $554 mil­lion in de­vel­op­men­tal and com­mer­cial mile­stone pay­ments, in ad­di­tion to po­ten­tial sin­gle-dig­it sales roy­al­ties.

Kro­nos launched in 2018 with CEO Nor­bert Bischof­berg­er, the long­time leader of Gilead’s R&D ef­forts, at the helm. He took the com­pa­ny pub­lic in 2020, though the shares have strug­gled since the IPO. Late last year, the com­pa­ny pulled the plug on a Phase III tri­al of its acute myeloid leukemia drug en­tosple­tinib, piv­ot­ing in­stead to an ear­li­er-stage com­pound.

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