Chicago’s Cour Pharmaceuticals—recently honored as one of Fierce Biotech’s 2024 Fierce 15—is bringing its immunology mission to the fore with a new deal featuring Swiss drug juggernaut Roche.
Roche’s Genentech unit has tapped Cour to help develop and commercialize the biotech’s bespoke tolerogenic nanoparticle treatments for autoimmune diseases, Cour said Tuesday.
Under the deal, Cour is in line to receive upfront and near-term milestones worth $40 million, plus add-on cashouts linked to development, commercial and net sales milestone payments in excess of $900 million in addition to tiered royalties on net sales.
Cour will handle preclinical development and manufacturing tech transfer as part of the agreement while Genentech is on deck to tackle clinical development, regulatory filings and marketing efforts.
“We see Genentech as an ideal partner with world-class scientific expertise and together have an opportunity to build upon Cour’s clinical success to date in autoimmune diseases,” Cour’s CEO, Dannielle Appelhans, said in a statement.
Founded in 2013, Cour is broadly looking to develop novel reverse vaccines that reprogram the body’s white blood cells to avoid attacking healthy organs. To start, the company is focusing on autoimmune diseases and is endeavoring to design prophylactics that hit targets without blunting patients’ ability to ward off infections.
The company is utilizing technology borne from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, which leverages biodegradable nanoparticles that encapsulate certain antigens.
Primarily, Cour is working on two phase 2 programs in myasthenia gravis and primary biliary cholangitis, plus a type 1 diabetes prospect that is poised to leave the clinic and another earlier asset in an undisclosed indication, according to the company’s website.
On Roche/Genentech's side, the duo are best known for their long-standing work in cancer, though it does have connections to other disease areas. This includes autoimmune disorders, most recently seeking to make its blood cancer med Gazyva work in active lupus nephritis, while also for many years selling its Actemra/RoActemra for certain forms of arthritis.
This also comes amid a shakeup in Genentech's research departments as, back in the summer, the company shuttered its cancer immunology research department, with that research function being merged with molecular oncology research to form one single cancer research body within Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED).
Besides the oncology shakeup, the discovery functions within Genentech’s department of human pathobiology & OMNI reverse translation group are also being moved into the departments of immunology and neuroscience in research biology.
It's also been a big year for that reeled in a $105-million Series A fundraising round, which was co-led by Lumira Ventures and Alpha Wave Ventures, with inputs from the Roche Venture Fund, the Pfizer Breakthrough Growth Initiative, Bristol Myers Squibb, Angelini Ventures and the JDRF T1D Fund.
In January, Cours said it planned to use the cash to advance its immune tolerance platform, including phase 2a studies in myasthenia gravis and type 1 diabetes.
The biotech has also teamed up with Takeda under a 2019 licensing deal for its therapy CNP-201 in celiac disease.