Genentech Mines The Microbiome Again With IBD Deal
Executive Summary
Genentech is to work with microbiome therapeutics company Microbiotica in a collaboration to discover, develop and commercialise treatments for inflammatory bowel disease.
Microbiotica Ltd., a spin out from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, will use its metagenomics microbiome platform to analyse data from Genentech Inc.’s inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) trials to find biomarker signatures of drug response, novel IBD drug targets and live bacterial therapeutic products. This is Microbiotica’s first collaboration since its inception 18 months ago.
In addition to an undisclosed upfront payment, Microbiotica is eligible to receive research, development and commercialization milestone payments up to $534m based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones, plus royalties on products that come through the collaboration. Genentech retains the right to license assets that Microbiotica produces through the partnership.
This is the second such deal in as many months for Genentech. It announced plans in May to partner with Lodo Therapeutics Corp. in a deal which could earn the latter $969m over the life of the partnership. The collaboration will use Lodo’s Metagenomics Technology Platform to identify novel molecules with therapeutic potential for multiple and unspecified, disease-related targets. (Also see "Deal Watch: Genentech Gets Down In The Dirt With Lodo Therapeutics" - Scrip, 11 May, 2018.) Lodo focuses on identifying and producing unique, bioactive natural products directly from the microbial DNA sequence information contained in soil.
The hype surrounding the use of the microbiome to produce new therapies has been gathering momentum in recent years. Ferring Pharmaceuticals AS took a strong step forward in the race to bring the first approved human microbiome product to market with its acquisition of Rebiotix Inc. in April. (Also see "Ferring Leapfrogs Into Late-Stage Microbiome Race With Rebiotix Buy" - Scrip, 5 Apr, 2018.) Rebiotix has a Phase III microbiome product for the prevention of recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. In a previous Scrip interview, Ferring chief scientific officer Per Falk described the microbiome as "the next frontier in life sciences".
James Sabry, Genentech's senior vice president and global head of partnering, commented: “We believe the microbiome represents a new paradigm in biomedicine, both for understanding drug response and as a novel therapeutic modality. We have chosen to collaborate with Microbiotica because of its high-quality science and look forward to working together to potentially bring new medicines to people suffering from IBD.”
Microbiotica was set up with funding from Cambridge Innovation Capital and UK technology transfer expert IP Group plc, both contributing £4m. Its science is based on work by co-founder and chief scientific officer Trevor Lawley.
Its platform comprises a leading microbiome culture collection and linked reference genome database that enable unprecedented precision of gut bacterial identification at clinical trial scale, Microbiotica says.
It uses AI techniques to discern microbiome signatures linked to phenotype. The availability of the physical culture collection enables biological evaluation of bacteria in proprietary translational models including humanised microbiome mouse models.
The company uses AI techniques to analyse the complex datasets to discern microbiome signatures linked to phenotype. The physical culture collection enables biological evaluation of bacteria in proprietary translational models including humanised microbiome mouse models.
“This collaboration reflects Microbiotica’s strategy of utilizing its platform for medicines and biomarker discovery while simultaneously expanding platform capabilities,” said Mike Romanos, Microbiotica CEO. He added that while Genentech would retain rights to proprietary biomarkers, targets and medicines, the collaboration would enable it to continue to rapidly expand its reference genome database and culture collection.