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news.Roche’s subsidiary Genentech has entered into a strategic drug discovery collaboration with Lodo Therapeutics, which is focused on the creation of therapeutics derived from nature that will impact patients across the world.
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As per terms of the deal, Genentech will use Lodo Therapeutics’ genome mining and biosynthetic cluster assembly platform to discover novel molecules with therapeutic potential against multiple disease-related targets.
Lodo will secure an undisclosed upfront payment from Genentech, and will also secure research, development and commercialization milestone payments up to $969m based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones.
Lodo will also secure tiered-royalties on sales of certain products, which are being developed under collaboration.
Compounds derived from natural products include a major portion of the small molecule drugs used to treat cancer, infections and chronic illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes.
Rather than depending on culturing known strains of bacteria, Lodo Therapeutics’ genome-based approach leverages the potential of microbial evolution to discover novel and naturally occurring compounds, which can be used to treat cancer and drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Lodo Therapeutics co-founder and chief scientific officer David Pompliano said: “Our ability to enter into a strategic collaboration with one of the leaders in innovating wholly new classes of drugs just two years after Lodo Therapeutics was founded reflects the potential of our proprietary platform to be a valuable resource to advance their drug discovery initiatives.”
Genentech partnering global head and senior vice president James Sabry said: “Genentech is committed to accessing innovative technologies and we are excited to collaborate with Lodo Therapeutics to apply their Metagenomics Technology Platform to potentially discover therapeutics for difficult drug targets.”
Lodo Therapeutics is engaged in the development of novel therapeutics derived from nature.
The firm discovers and produces bioactive natural products directly from the microbial DNA sequence information contained in soil. Information encoded in bacterial genomes will help the company in the discovery of new medicines.