Dive Brief:
- After an initial tie-up in December 2016, AstraZeneca and Bicycle Therapeutics will expand their development deal to include additional targets in the respiratory and cardio-metabolic space.
- The original collaboration included an undisclosed number of targets and, at the time, Bicycle said it was "eligible for over $1 billion in payments, including an upfront payment, future R&D funding, development, regulatory and commercialization milestones." The most recent statement says the deal is now valued in "excess of $1 billion."
- The expansion increases the number of targets the companies are pursuing and triggers an unspecified milestone payment for Bicycle.
Dive Insight:
While Bicycle's own focus is on oncology, the small U.K. biotech has tapped its bicyclic peptide platform to develop therapeutics for its big pharma counterpart. The compounds Bicycle develops are small peptides stretching between nine to 15 amino acids long. The company touts their ability to combine the "specificity and affinity" of antibodies, but in a small molecule form that allows for better solubility and dosing flexibility.
The last few years have been a struggle for AstraZeneca, which has sought to prove itself in oncology while selling off unwanted assets. To that end, the company has made a number of licensing deals that monetize products no longer a part of the company's core focus.
Most recently, the British pharma sold the rights to the antipsychotic Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) in several countries outside the U.S. Before that, it spun out six experimental drugs into a standalone biotech that will focus on autoimmune diseases.
AstraZeneca currently has three compounds in its late-stage cardio-metabolic pipeline. Just this past Friday, it won U.S. approval for Lokelma, previously known as ZS-9, for the treatment of hyperkalemia, or high blood potassium. It also has six compounds in Phase 2 and three in Phase 1 in the space, including for type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and chronic kidney disease.
Both its cardio-metabolic and respiratory pipelines are significantly smaller than its cancer pipeline. The company has been trying to compete with oncology majors like Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Yet, the British pharma has had a number of setbacks in the oncology space.
Last month, a combination of its immunotherapies Imfinzi (durvalumab) and tremelimumab failed to hit its primary endpoint in a Phase 3 study of previously treated lung cancer patients.
Prior to that, AstraZeneca disappointed investors when it pushed back the final readout of its MYSTIC study. An earlier analysis from the trial showed the same combo failed to extend progression-free survival in first-line non-small cell lung cancer patients, although the company hopes the study will prove the regimen can extend overall survival.
AstraZeneca will need several of these programs to pan out; the company has been chasing a goal of $45 billion in annual revenues, but only achieved $22 billion for the full-year 2017.