The Dutch biotech Synaf­fix, which has been ac­tive in the deal space out of the gate in 2023, is build­ing on a deal it made with Macro­Gen­ics last year.

Synaf­fix an­nounced Tues­day it has ex­pand­ed an agree­ment with the biotech Macro­Gen­ics to li­cense out its an­ti­body con­ju­ga­tion plat­form, called Gly­co­Con­nect, along with oth­er pieces of Synaf­fix’s tech­nol­o­gy. The deal is de­signed to cre­ate sev­er­al ADC pro­grams. Both com­pa­nies inked the first in Feb­ru­ary 2022, which net­ted Synaf­fix $586 mil­lion in up­front and mile­stone pay­ments, with three pro­grams be­ing de­vel­oped. Synaf­fix is el­i­gi­ble for roy­al­ties on com­mer­cial sales.

The ex­pan­sion will now see Synaf­fix re­ceive a pos­si­ble $2.2 bil­lion, plus tiered roy­al­ties in the low to high sin­gle-dig­it range for pos­si­ble net sales on the prod­ucts. The ex­pand­ed deal will al­so al­low Macro­Gen­ics to have sev­en to­tal pro­grams, in­clud­ing the three from the orig­i­nal deal. How­ev­er, no de­tails on the time­line for the re­lease of ADC prod­ucts were im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able.

An­tho­ny De­Boer, the vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at Synaf­fix, told End­points News in an email that the deal was ex­pand­ed be­cause the part­ners want­ed to de­vel­op a larg­er num­ber of ADC prod­uct can­di­dates.

“The teams and tech­nolo­gies of both com­pa­nies work seam­less­ly to­geth­er and we want­ed to build on that mo­men­tum and broad­en our re­la­tion­ship,” De­Boer wrote. He al­so added no fur­ther ex­pan­sions of the deal are on the books for now.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, there are now 13 com­pa­nies that are de­vel­op­ing more than 20 AD­Cs us­ing Synaf­fix tech­nol­o­gy, with five pro­grams hav­ing start­ed clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

The news has al­so giv­en Macro­Gen­ics a small bump in its stock price $MGNX by 2% since open­ing on Tues­day.

Ezio Bon­vi­ni

“Macro­Gen­ics con­tin­ues to be ex­cit­ed about the promise of Synaf­fix’s nov­el drug-link­er tech­nol­o­gy that can help ad­vance mul­ti­ple po­ten­tial first and best-in-class AD­Cs for the treat­ment of can­cer,” Macro­Gen­ics chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer Ezio Bon­vi­ni said in a re­lease.

Synaf­fix has been busy on the deal front so far this year. In Jan­u­ary, the biotech struck a deal with Am­gen to de­vel­op new AD­Cs, with the phar­ma start­ing with one ADC pro­gram and promis­ing Synaf­fix up to $2 bil­lion if it opt­ed in­to four oth­ers.

Sin­ga­pore’s Hum­ming­bird Bio­science al­so en­tered in­to a li­cens­ing agree­ment with Synaf­fix at the be­gin­ning of this year, with the biotech el­i­gi­ble for up to $150 mil­lion, in­clud­ing an up­front and mile­stone pay­ment plus roy­al­ties on net sales. Hum­ming­bird ob­tained the rights to use Synaf­fix’s ADC tech­nolo­gies.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.