Another day, another antibody-drug conjugate deal. This time it’s Bristol Myers Squibb snapping up Orum Therapeutics’ phase 1 blood cancer med for $100 million upfront.
Orum will also be eligible for milestone payments of $80 million if the ORM-6151 program is successful, according to a Monday press release. Further financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The modest outlay is not BMS’s first in ADCs this year. The company offered $22.8 million upfront to Tubulis plus $1 billion in milestone potential in April to access the biotech’s ADC creation technology.
BMS’s deals pale in comparison to recent activity from its peers in the ADC space. Merck & Co. handed over a massive $4 billion upfront to Daiichi Sankyo for three programs last month, with a potential for $22 billion in milestones if all steps are met. Days later, GSK paid $85 million upfront with $1.4 billion on the backend for Hansoh Pharma’s gynecologic cancer asset.
Orum’s ORM-6151 is an anti-CD33 antibody-enabled GSPT1 degrader that has been cleared for phase 1 testing in acute myeloid leukemia or high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes.
The companies had little to say about the transaction, besides Orum CEO Sung Joo Lee, Ph.D., calling BMS’s deal validation for his company’s Dual-Precision Targeted Protein Degradation approach.
Elsewhere in oncology, BMS in October landed a hot item in pharma: Mirati Therapeutics. After years of deal rumors, Mirati finally agreed to be acquired by the New York pharma for $5.8 billion. Regulatory documents revealed a competitive race to close the deal, including two other “global pharmaceutical companies.”