Orum Therapeutics Inc. struck a potential $945 million (₩1.3 trillion) deal with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. to discover novel degrader antibody conjugates (DAC) as targeted conditioning agents for use with gene editing, including Vertex’s gene therapy, Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel).
Orum Therapeutics Inc., of Boston and Daejeon, South Korea, is planning for an IPO on the Korea Exchange by the end of 2024, having passed a technology evaluation required for listing on the Kosdaq, a company spokesperson confirmed to BioWorld.
Raising $94 million in a series A round, South San Francisco-based Firefly Bio Inc. has emerged from stealth to advance its Firelink linker platform technology to develop degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs) to treat cancer. A combination of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and targeted protein degradation therapies, DACs are a new class of medicines that have recently gained attention for their ability to replace toxic ADC payloads and to eliminate cancer-driven proteins.
Degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs) are at the heart of the new deal between C4 Therapeutics Inc. and Merck & Co. Inc. C4 will get $10 million up front, milestones that could total $600 million and about $2.5 billion across the entire collaboration.
Hitching onto the emerging drug class of degrader-antibody conjugates (DAC), U.S. pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) is picking up rights to the U.S. and Korean biotech Orum Therapeutics Inc.’s blood cancer candidate, ORM-6151, in a potential $180 million deal.
In a mammoth deal with a potentially huge payoff, Nurix Therapeutics Inc. and Seagen Inc. will collaborate to develop what they call a new class of medicines, Degrader-Antibody Conjugates, to create drugs with new mechanisms of action for treating cancer.