The dis­rup­tors at EQRx have their eyes on the PD-(L)1 mar­ket — tee­ing up $150M cash to grab 2 back­bone ther­a­pies from Chi­na

EQRx is pay­ing top dol­lar to bring a pair of PD-(L)1 drugs in­to its port­fo­lio of fast-fol­low ther­a­pies, of­fer­ing $150 mil­lion up­front in what could shape up to be a $1.3 bil­lion al­liance with Chi­na’s CStone.

As ear­ly as 2017 Cel­gene had bet on a made-in-Chi­na PD-1 via its pact with BeiGene, quick­ly fol­lowed by Ar­cus as the sec­ond check­point wave was loom­ing; more re­cent­ly Eli Lil­ly im­port­ed long­time part­ner In­novent’s PD-1 in a $1 bil­lion deal. All are div­ing in­to a space now dom­i­nat­ed by Mer­ck’s Keytru­da fran­chise, where six oth­er play­ers are try­ing to catch up by carv­ing out their own nich­es — and more are on their way to tap in­to the var­i­ous I/O pair­ings an­chored by a PD-(L)1. But none so far has quite shared EQRx’s ex­plic­it mis­sion to dis­rupt the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mar­ket by of­fer­ing a low­er cost op­tion.

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