AstraZeneca seals $1 billion deal with Bicycle Therapeutics
pharmafile | December 2, 2016 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | AstraZeneca, Bicycle Therapeutics
Bicycle Therapeutics, Cambridge-based British biotech firm, has announced that it has signed a deal that could potentially be worth over $1 billion with AstraZeneca. The deal will see Bicycle identify an undisclosed number of bicyclic peptides for AstraZeneca which can then further develop the targets.
The breakdown of the deal includes an up-front fee, funding for further R&D, as well as regulatory and commercialisation milestones. The $1 billion figure will only be reached if all developed targets come to market but the deal will also see them receive royalties on any sales of products that brought to fruition by the deal. The collaboration will see Bicycle achieve a further cash boost after raising $32 million back in 2014 on the promise of peptide development.
Bicycle Therapeutics is developing a class of medicines based upon its proprietary bicyclic peptide product platform. The medicines’ peptidic nature provides a “tuneable” pharmacokinetic half-life and a renal route of clearance, avoiding the liver and gastrointestinal tract toxicities often seen with other drug modalities. Bicycle is developing its lead candidate, BT1718, which is now nearing the clinical trial process.
AstraZeneca’s Kumar Srinivasan, vice president of Scientific Partnering and Alliances at AstraZeneca, highlighted the collaboration as: “A broad partnership between two entrepreneurial and innovative companies, as illustrated by the collaborative deal structure we have put in place. Bicycle’s focus so far has been in oncology and bringing AstraZeneca’s expertise in respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic disease to their platform substantially expands its potential,”
“We are pleased to be partnering with AstraZeneca to deploy our Bicycle technology to multiple targets across important disease areas, further expanding our therapeutic scope to indications outside of our core focus in oncology,” said Kevin Lee, chief executive officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. “This collaboration is a testament to the broad applicability of Bicycles and the robust platform we have created. We look forward to working with AstraZeneca to create novel inhaled therapeutics and targeting agents in these areas of high unmet medical need.”
Ben Hargreaves
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