September 6, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WALTHAM, Mass. – Bioverativ, Inc. , the Biogen hemophilia drug spinoff company, and England-based Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd. struck a collaborative agreement to develop therapies for the treatment of hemophilia and sickle cell disease.
The two companies will focus on Bicycle’s proprietary bicyclic peptides platform, from which the company derives its name. Bicycles are a novel class of small molecule medicines designed to overcome many of the limitations of existing drug modalities, the company said. Bicycles are a new therapeutic modality that combines attributes of antibodies, small molecules and peptides within one molecule. The bicyclic peptides are designed to be used as standalone therapeutic entities or coupled to deliver a variety of therapeutic payloads.
Bicycle Therapeutics will be responsible for leading initial discovery activities through lead optimization to candidate selection for two programs. Bioverativ will lead preclinical and clinical development, as well as subsequent marketing and commercialization. Bioverativ will reimburse Bicycle for internal and external program-related costs. Under terms of the deal Bioverativ will provide Bicycle with $10 million in upfront monies along with near-term research and development funding of $4.2 million. As the deal progresses Bicycle could also receive up to $410 million in additional milestone payments. Bicycle could also receive additional ingle to low double-digit royalties related to product sales. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Tim Harris, head of research and development at Bioverativ, said the company chose to partner with tiny Bicycle because if offers a unique opportunity to “identify an entirely new therapeutic modality that may lead to meaningful new treatments and outcomes for people living with hemophilia and sickle cell disease.” Harris said the company, which officially launched earlier this year, is always on the lookout for new technologies and therapies that can target blood disorders.
“Combining Bioverativ’s deep expertise in hematology with our powerful platform offers great promise for the development of novel, targeted therapies for patients. This alliance provides the latest validation of our Bicycle platform and furthers our strategy to evaluate its potential in a wide range of new disease areas,” Kevin Lee, Bicycle’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
For Bicycle, the deal comes a few months after it secured $52 million in Series B financing that will be used to develop the company’s lead cancer molecule, BT1718. That financing deal came several months after another big coup. In December 2016, Bicycle inked a deal worth up to $1 billion with HREF="http://investor.biospace.com/biospace/quote?Symbol=AZN">AZN) to identify molecules for an undisclosed number of targets for AstraZeneca.
In addition to its deal with AstraZeneca, in April, Bicycle also received a preclinical milestone development for the treatment of diabetic macular edema, under its ophthalmology alliance with ThromboGenics .
