Arvinas signed a license agreement with Genentech for the development of new therapeutics using Arvinas' PROTAC technology covering multiple disease targets.
Arvinas will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and is eligible to receive development and commercialization milestone payments in excess of $300 million based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones. Arvinas also is eligible to receive tiered-royalties on sales of products resulting from the license agreement.
“Our PROTAC technology represents a completely novel approach to the targeted therapy of cancer and many other diseases, and we are delighted to be working with Genentech on their targets of interest, said Manuel Litchman, M.D., president and CEO of Arvinas.”
“Genentech is very interested in protein degradation as a therapeutic approach to address difficult disease targets,” added James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., senior vp of global partnering. “Arvinas's PROTAC technology offers an exciting opportunity to harness the body's own system to degrade pathogenic proteins.”
PROTACs, or proteolysis-targeting chimeras, are bifunctional small molecules that are designed to target proteins for degradation and removal from a cell. These molecules are intended to induce a cell's own protein-degradation machinery to bind to a particular protein and “label” it for degradation, thus removing that protein from the system entirely. This contrasts to a more traditional drug development approach that inhibits proteins, which provides transient benefit and works on about a quarter of the body's proteins, explained an Arvinas official.
