Roche strikes an €87.5M dis­cov­ery deal with Con­fo; On­cono­va out-li­cens­es pre­clin­i­cal drug to Chi­na's HanX

→ Bel­gian biotech Con­fo Ther­a­peu­tics is get­ting some sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from Roche. The phar­ma gi­ant is sup­ply­ing €6 mil­lion over the next 30 months to get a col­lab­o­ra­tion work­ing on GPCR drugs for neu­ro­log­i­cal and de­vel­op­ment dis­or­ders. If it works out, there’s an­oth­er €81.5 mil­lion for mile­stones.

On­cono­va is li­cens­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing on a pre­clin­i­cal dual in­hibitor with HanX Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which will fund all the stud­ies re­quired for IND ap­provals in ex­change for com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights in Greater Chi­na. The prod­uct, ON 123300, tar­gets both CDK4/6 and ARK5, there­by over­com­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of cur­rent CDK 4/6 in­hibitors that must be used in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er drugs. The part­ners are hop­ing that da­ta from the Chi­nese stud­ies, which will com­ply with Amer­i­can stan­dards, can be used in the US IND as well. On its side of the deal, On­cono­va re­ceives an up­front pay­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial mile­stone pay­ments, along with roy­al­ties on Chi­nese sales. “We re­main fo­cused on our lat­er stage rigosert­ib clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment pro­grams in MDS with near term mile­stones, and look for­ward to a close col­lab­o­ra­tion with HanX as we lever­age their strong ex­per­tise in drug de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion,” On­cono­va CEO Ramesh Ku­mar said in a state­ment.

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