Jnana Therapeutics, a biotechnology company leveraging its next-generation chemoproteomics platform to discover medicines for challenging-to-drug targets, has entered into a second collaboration and license agreement with Roche for the discovery of small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer, immune-mediated and neurological diseases.
The collaboration covers multiple targets from a diverse range of target classes to address diseases with high unmet need.
“We are excited to partner with Roche, one of the largest healthcare companies and a strong collaborator, for a second time,” said Joanne Kotz, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Jnana Therapeutics. “Roche has been a valuable strategic partner and we are proud that our success to date has led to the opportunity to broaden our work together in immune-mediated and neurological diseases, as well as to extend our collaboration into cancer.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Jnana will receive an upfront payment of $50 million, significant near-term milestone payments, and additional potential future payments that could exceed $2 billion, as well as tiered royalties. Jnana will conduct discovery and preclinical activities against multiple cancer, immune-mediated and neurological disease targets, and Roche will be responsible for development and commercialization of any resulting products.
“We have made great progress in our existing partnership with Roche, which is focused on targeting SLC metabolite transporters, and have also made exciting progress in our internal pipeline against an array of target classes including transcription factors,” said Joel C. Barrish, Ph.D., co-founder, president and CSO of Jnana Therapeutics. “We are delighted to now bring the full power of our RAPID platform to our second partnership with Roche as we advance a diverse set of compelling therapeutic targets that have proven challenging to drug.”
“We have been impressed by Jnana’s team and their RAPID drug discovery platform, as part of our first collaboration that focused on SLC metabolite transporters,” said James Sabry, global head of Roche Pharma Partnering. “As fostering truly symbiotic partnerships with our partners where we learn and grow together is a key focus of our overall partnering strategy, we are excited to now build on our successful existing collaboration with Jnana to address new target classes as we expand our efforts to discover new medicines for patients with cancer, immune and neurological diseases.”
