Roche is wasting no time in getting out its checkbook in 2025, signing a new biobucks-heavy pact that aims to add another new antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) to its pipeline.
Roche, which put billions on the line a year ago across several ADC pacts, has returned to Innovent Biologics—this time delving into the China-based biopharma’s pipeline for IBI3009, a DLL3-targeted ADC.
The pact sees Roche nab exclusive global rights to IBI3009 as both parties will work together on early-stage development after which, should all go well, Roche will take over development on its own. The first phase 1 test of IBI3009 began dosing just last month.
Innovent gets $80 million upfront, although this could swell to $1 billion should IBI3009 hit all its research and sales milestones.
The deal builds on Roche’s jump into the ADC race, a hot research area in cancer, last year. In January 2024, the Swiss pharma penned a $66 million upfront agreement to access Moma Therapeutics’ KnowledgeBase ADC platform across various cancers. That deal also came with the promise of $2 billion in milestone payments, should everything go to plan.
Roche followed up the Moma pact just days later with a $1 billion biobucks deal with China’s MediLink for exclusive rights to YL211, a mesenchymal epidermal transforming factor ADC under development for solid tumors.
The Swiss oncology major is also no stranger to Innovent, with the pair penning a backloaded $2 billion deal in 2020 that saw Innovent gain nonexclusive access to Roche’s cell therapies and bispecific antibodies for both blood and solid cancers.
"We are excited to enter this partnership with the Innovent team to further develop this promising investigational treatment for patients with small cell lung cancer,” Boris Zaïtra, head of corporate business development at Roche, said in a release.
“This partnership builds on Roche's long history of innovation in the area of ADCs, to address the unmet needs of patients with solid tumors with transformational medicines.”