OncoNano’s platform, called ON-BOARD, packages drugs in pH-sensitive micelles that ensure their specific delivery near tumors, while also preventing systemic exposure.
Gilead is joining with Texas’ OncoNano Medicine to deliver one of Gilead’s investigational cancer drugs using the biotech’s platform, fulfilling a promise it made late last year to stay active in business development.
Details of the deal, announced Tuesday, were sparse, with the companies revealing only that the arrangement will mean a $300 million windfall for OncoNano—a sum that includes the upfront commitment, milestones and additional payments related to an additional target, if Gilead chooses to expand the collaboration.
At the heart of the partnership is OncoNano’s proprietary ON-BOARD platform, which uses “ultra pH-sensitive polymeric micelles” to encapsulate drugs and respond to the cellular environments shared by various cancers, according to the company’s website. This approach not only protects the therapeutic payload from being broken down in the body—therefore preventing systemic exposure—but also ensures their specific release into the tumor’s microenvironment.
“We believe it can complement Gilead’s oncology expertise to bring effective treatment options to patients,” OncoNano CEO Kartik Krishnan said in a statement.
The companies did not disclose which of Gilead’s cancer drugs they will apply ON-BOARD to.
Tuesday’s OncoNano partnership comes after Gilead last month finally gave up on its TIGIT therapy domvanalimab, which it had been developing in partnership with Arcus Therapeutics. The partners were studying domvanalimab in the Phase III STAR-221 trial in first-line advanced gastric and esophageal cancers. An interim analysis at the time found no significant improvements in overall survival compared with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo—and determined that continuing on with the study would be futile.
Gilead and Arcus decided to terminate STAR-221 as well as a Phase II trial called EDGE-Gastric.
The collaboration with OncoNano also comes a few months after Gilead expressed an eagerness to spend money in business development, especially looking to improve its portfolios in liver disease, immunology and cancer.
CFO Andrew Dickinson, speaking on the company’s Q3 earnings call, said Gilead is looking for “late-stage derisked assets” to pick up “every two to three years at a minimum.”
