FibroGen is taking on Fortis Therapeutics' sole asset, an antibody-drug conjugate for prostate cancer and multiple myeloma, to fortify a pipeline that has to date been mainly siloed toward anemia and fibrotic diseases.
FibroGen is licensing a phase 1 antibody-drug conjugate from Fortis for an $80 million option fee and up to $200 million in biobucks, according to an announcement Tuesday. There’s no upfront fee included in the deal.
Fortis will hand over its sole asset, the prostate cancer and multiple myeloma therapy FOR46. CEO Jay Lichter, Ph.D., said he had no comment when asked what the company’s future plans were, given the pipeline is now empty.
The deal gives FibroGen a new clinical contender to bulk up the back end of a pipeline that’s been narrowly focused around approved med Evrenzo and pamrevlumab. Evrenzo is approved in Europe, Japan and China for anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), but commercialization rights have been doled out to Astellas and AstraZeneca. The drug has yet to be approved in the U.S. and was first rejected in 2021.
Additional efforts to expand Evrenzo’s use have recently fallen flat after it failed a phase 3 trial in anemia for patients with myelodysplastic syndromes. That’s thrown AstraZeneca’s commitment to the med in question after the two said in May 2022 that they couldn’t agree on a development path for Evrenzo in CKD after the initial FDA rejection.
The next two quarters will be critical for FibroGen’s future, with four phase 3 readouts expected, the majority of which are for runner-up fibrotic asset pamrevlumab. The company expects results from trials testing pamrevlumab in ambulatory and non-ambulatory Duchenne muscular dystrophy and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
FOR46, meanwhile, is currently in a phase 1/2 trial sponsored by the University of California, San Francisco as part of a combination therapy with Pfizer’s Xtandi for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The trial is still recruiting with the hopes of enrolling 36 participants. A separate phase 1 trial testing the med as a monotherapy in prostate cancer is slated for primary completion at the end of July, according to an update to the clinical trial record submitted April 29.