Dive Brief:
- Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson, has hooked rights to PeptiDream's Peptide Discovery Platform System (PDPS) in a discovery deal to find peptide hits for metabolic and cardiovascular disease.
- In a deal valued at $1.15 billion, PeptiDream will find macrocyclic/constrained peptide hits and create peptide and small molecule therapeutics.
- In return for pre-clinical, clinical and commercialization milestone payments, Janssen has development and commercialization rights to all compounds, as well as an exercisable option to peptide-drug conjugate (PDC) use and applications. PeptiDream will get undisclosed levels of royalties.
Dive Insight:
One of Janssen Pharmaceuticals' areas of therapeutic focus is cardiovascular and metabolism, and this deal will serve to boost the company's early-stage pipeline, in both biologics and small molecule drugs.
Janssen is just the most recent in a string of deals for PeptiDream, which was founded in 2006. The company has ongoing discovery deals with 16 of the leading pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. PeptiDream has also licensed its discovery platform to Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Novartis, Lilly and Roche's Genentech.
"Over the past few years PeptiDream has greatly expanded our ability to turn PDPS-identified peptide candidates into peptide therapeutics, small molecule drugs and peptide drug conjugates [PDCs], and we greatly look forward to working with a world-renowned organization like Janssen to leverage these capabilities to discover and development the next generation of first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics," said Kiichi Kubota, CEO and president of PeptiDream.
Just last month, PeptiDream announced the fifth milestone from its macrocyclic peptide drug discovery deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb, when it identified a lead compound, and the first milestone in the macrocyclic peptide drug discovery alliance with Shionogi, based on the identification of a set of candidates.