Chugai Pharmaceutical and Araris Biotech have entered an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC)-focused research collaboration and option-to-license agreement worth up to $780m.
Under the deal, Swiss oncology biotech Araris will use its ADC platform to generate ADCs using Chugai-provided antibodies against undisclosed targets supplied by Chugai.
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Japan-headquartered Chugai will oversee the funding of the research and will oversee development, manufacturing and global commercialisation duties if it decides to license a candidate. Araris is lined for up to $780m in milestone payments, as well as royalties on products that reach the market.
ADCs have become a promising therapeutic modality in oncology and are one of the fastest-growing areas in cancer drug research. Chugai already has experience in ADCs, overseeing approvals of lymphoma treatment Polivy in Japan, a drug developed by its majority shareholder Roche. However, the pharma company currently does not list ADCs in development according to its drug pipeline.
Araris, a spin-off from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and ETH Zurich, has developed linker technology that allows attachment of payloads to ‘off-the-shelf’ antibodies in a single step. The key differentiator of the biotech’s platform is it allows the conjugation of two or three cytotoxic payloads simultaneously.
Araris claims its peptide linker technology overcomes limitations in current ADC technologies such as heterogeneity, aggregation in blood, and high costs.
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By GlobalDataAraris CEO Dr Dragan Grabulovski told Pharmaceutical Technology: “A problem of current ADCs is that they carry and administer just one cytotoxic class, and this results in resistance and limited efficacy. Our technology allows these therapies to conjugate two or three or multi-warheads simultaneously. We call these multi-warhead ADCs and they mimic conventional chemotherapy.”
Araris’ latest deal follows a transaction in 2023, which saw it enter an ADC collaboration agreement with Japan-based Taiho Pharmaceutical.
According to Grabulovski, work with further pharma companies is on the cards: “We are continuing to talk to interested pharma…the goal is to enter into a few selected high-value partnerships.”
Along with generating ADCs for partnered companies, Araris is also developing two internal programmes. One is against nectin-four, a target which already has an ADC at market courtesy of Pfizer’s Padcev (enfortumab vedotin), though Grabulovski says Araris’ candidate has three different payloads as a differentiating factor. The second programme is targeting NaPi2b, for which there is no approved ADC on the market.
The ADC space has seen many billion-dollar deals as pharma companies look to shore up their pipeline with the emerging modality. Pfizer – who is also researching multi-payload ADCs, acquired Seagen for $43bn in December 2023 while MSD and AbbVie have also completed $10.8bn and $10.1bn deals in recent years.
