Boehringer signs antibody myeloma R&D deal
pharmafile | May 10, 2010 | News story | Research and Development | Boehringer, Cancer, Micromet, myeloma
Boehringer Ingelheim and US biotech company Micromet are to research and develop a new BiTE antibody to treat multiple myeloma.
The disease is largely incurable but such products represent a new therapeutic approach: BiTE antibodies direct the body’s cell-destroying T cells against tumours.
They bind them together with tumours, causing a process called apoptosis in which tumour cells destroy themselves.
“We recognise the advantage of combining Micromet’s BiTE antibody platform with our target identification and development expertise,” said Boehringer Ingelheim’s head of corporate research, Wolfgang Rettig.
He added that the move had the potential to address a “significant” unmet medical need.
Boehringer will pay Micromet five million euros upfront, with Micromet eligible to receive development and regulatory milestone payments of up to 50 million euros.
It will also be in line for tiered low double-digit royalties on product sales outside the US.
Micromet, which already has partnerships with companies such as Sanofi-aventis, Bayer Schering Pharma and Merck Serono, wants to build a commercial haematology franchise in the US.
The company’s chief executive Christian Itin explained: “In line with the strategic importance of hemato-oncology for Micromet we have retained US co-promotion rights for this product candidate.”
Both companies say the US agreement has been made under “commercial terms commensurate with a profit split”.
Micromet is responsible for discovering the BiTE antibody but will carry out further pre-clinical studies – for which it pays costs up to a pre-defined amount – with Boehringer Ingelheim.
The pharma company then has to sort out all manufacturing activities, clinical development and worldwide commercialisation, outside the US – and pay for them. Micromet will only bear the costs for its sales force in the US.
Multiple myeloma research is a potentially attractive area for companies looking at new medicines, which a number of firms are actively doing with varying degrees of success.
In March Abbott acquired US company Facet Biotech and its early-stage treatment elotuzumab.
Also in that month Germany’s Merck KGaA halted a phase II exploratory trial of Stimuvax (BLP25 liposome vaccine) in patients with the condition after one developed encephalitis, a potentially fatal swelling of the brain.
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