Gilead is betting up to $750 million on Kymera’s anti-CDK2 molecular glue for solid tumors, while Sanofi elected to move forward with another protein degrader from the biotech, designed to target immune-mediated diseases.
Wednesday is a big day for Massachusetts-based Kymera Therapeutics, which is not only taking its ongoing collaboration with Sanofi to the next level but also bringing on a new powerhouse partner in Gilead.
Gilead is putting up to $750 million on the line—a sum that includes an $85 million upfront commitment—to work with Kymera on a novel molecular glue degrader that targets and destroys the CDK2 protein. According to the release, Wednesday’s partnership will “accelerate the development and commercialization” of this asset, which the companies claim has a “broad oncology treatment potential” for solid tumors, such as breast cancer.
Under the terms of the agreement, Kymera will be entitled to tiered royalties in the high-single-digit to mid-teens range on net product sales. The biotech will maintain charge of research activities for the CDK2 program while Gilead will retain the option to exclusively license the asset. If the pharma exercises this option, it will gain the right to develop and commercialize the therapy.
Such is the case for Sanofi, which on Wednesday told Kymera that it will take one of its preclinical assets forward into clinical testing. The pharma and Kymera first joined hands in July 2020. For $150 million upfront and the possibility of up to $2 billion in milestones, Sanofi gained access to the biotech’s IRAK4 program for immune-mediated diseases, as well as another earlier-stage program that the companies didn’t disclose at the time.
Now, Sanofi has decided to discontinue the partners’ lead IRAK4 asset, KT-474, and instead move forward with a preclinical next-gen IRAK4 inhibitor. Dubbed KT-485 or SAR447971, this drug candidate is a “highly potent and selective” molecule that is designed to be taken orally and targets the IRAK4 protein, a scaffolding kinase that bridges the innate and adaptive immune responses. According to Wednesday’s release, disabling IRAK4 through protein degraders could have an anti-inflammatory effect.
The pivot, however, likely represents a delay to the partners’ IRAK4 pipeline. “We believe this means the IRAK4 program could be pushed out by ~3 years,” Truist Securities analysts wrote to investors Wednesday. Sanofi expects to initiate Phase I trials for the candidate next year for immuno-inflammatory indications. Kymera received a $20 million milestone in the second quarter for its preclinical work on SAR447971.
Molecular glues and other protein degraders have become increasingly popular in recent years, presenting drugmakers with a novel modality with which they can target disease-causing proteins.
Like Sanofi and Gilead, many of the biggest players in the industry have signed big-ticket deals in this space. Last month, for instance, Roche through its subsidiary Genentech made a potential $2 billion investment in molecular glues when it expanded its ongoing cancer-focused partnership with Orionis Biosciences.
In January, AbbVie bet up to $1.64 billion in a partnership with Neomorph, leveraging the biotech’s molecular glue platform for cancer and immunology targets. Eli Lilly followed suit a month later, putting down more than $1.2 billion to work with Magnet Biomedicine on oncology indications.
Editor’s note (June 25): This story was updated with commentary from analysts at Truist Securities.
