Carmot Therapeutics has secured its second major partnership. The latest is a discovery and licensing deal with Roche’s Genentech ($ROG). It’s slated to apply its lead-identification technology to discover novel drugs, after which the biopharma will take over in the clinic and on marketing.
In February, Carmot expanded upon an existing discovery partnership with Amgen ($AMGN); the biopharma now will have provide research funding as well as preclinical and clinical milestone payments and royalties on potential commercial sales. The precise terms of both deals remain undisclosed.
“Signing this new discovery collaboration with Genentech is an important step as we continue to build additional value in the company through strategic partnerships around our proprietary chemistry platform, Chemotype Evolution,” said Carmot CEO Dr. Stig Hansen in a statement. “We look forward to closely working with scientific teams at Genentech to deliver potent new lead compounds for their programs.”
Carmot’s Chemotype Evolution starts from an anchor molecule, such as known inhibitors, substrates, co-factors, peptides or hits from a fragment screen; it then creates a library of two-component molecules. These are screened against the target to detect binding or modulation of target activity in biochemical or cell-based assays. This process can go through multiple iterations as the resulting molecules can themselves be used to restart it.
The San Francisco, CA-based startup has lead compounds across a number of indications. These include molecules targeting incretin receptors (GLP-1R and GIP-R) to treat Type 2 diabetes, obesity and NASH as well as protein-protein interactions for the treatment of cancer and inflammation.
Carmot expects to start Phase I testing next year for its novel, differentiated dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist.
- here is the announcement
Related Articles:
Genentech co-signs Nimbus' computer-aided R&D with an oncology pact
Epizyme nabs combo trial deal with Genentech for NHL candidate
Genentech pays $150M upfront to partner on NewLink's immuno-oncology drug