Dive Brief:
- Alphabet company Calico and private biotech startup C4 Therapeutics have joined forces to tackle age-related diseases including cancer.
- The collaboration will use C4 Therapeutics' in-house expertise to discover small molecule candidates. Calico will then move these forward into development and commercialization.
- Deal terms stretch for five years, but no financial details have been disclosed.
Dive Insight:
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute startup C4 Therapeutics began life in January 2016 with a $750 million deal with Roche already in hand, and a focus on disorders that are difficult-to-treat and diseases where drug resistance is a challenge. These include cancer, central nervous system, cardiovascular, GI and immune disorders.
C4's Degronimid platform is based around targeting and degrading proteins that are linked with disease such as cancer.
"We know from decades of translational research that it can be incredibly challenging to find effective pharmacologic inhibitors of many of the biologically well-validated targets, particularly in cancer," said Hal Barron, president of Research and Development at Calico. "Through the alternative strategy of specifically targeting such proteins for degradation, we believe we have the opportunity to identify promising new therapeutics in cancer and in other diseases as well."
Calico, owned by Alphabet (the umbrella company that also encompasses tech giant Google), focuses on developing drugs and technologies that help people to live both longer and better. The company has made a number of deals with academia, as well as with a range of different industry players including consumer genetics company AncestryDNA and the biopharmas Sanofi, Novartis and AbbVie.