Roche Enters $800 Million Collaboration with Rheos Medicines to Develop Novel Immunometabolism Therapies for Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases

Compiled by Fan Dongdong

Roche Announces Nearly $800 Million Collaboration with Rheos Medicines to Discover and Develop Novel Therapies for Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases

To this end, Roche will pay a cash upfront payment of $42.5 million, as well as $90 million in specific research and preclinical milestone payments and option fees. Rheos Medicines will also be eligible to receive additional milestone payments of up to approximately $660 million related to specific development, regulatory, and sales milestones, along with sales royalties.

Launched in March 2018 with a $60 million Series A financing round led by Third Rock Ventures, Rheos Medicines is dedicated to developing therapies for immune-mediated diseases by modulating metabolic pathways in immune cells, while ensuring drug precision through the identification of novel targets and biomarkers. The company’s product engine is a proprietary Immune Cell Encyclopedia (ICE), which maps metabolic pathways by leveraging different types of immune cells to regulate their fate and function. Barbara Fox assumed leadership of the startup a few months ago.

Barbara Fox stated, “We are delighted to partner with Roche, which will better leverage our expertise in immune cell metabolism and help accelerate the translation of insights in immunometabolism into the development of breakthrough therapies for patients with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.”

Under the agreement, Rheos Medicines will conduct exclusive research to identify novel immunometabolic targets capable of modulating the fate or function of certain human immune cells. Roche will obtain exclusive licensing rights to the research outcomes. For selected collaborative products, Rheos Medicines will be entitled to corresponding additional financial compensation for development and commercialization activities both within and outside the United States.

Gijs van den Brink, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Early Research & Development in Immunology, Infectious Diseases, and Ophthalmology at Roche, added, “We are delighted to collaborate with Rheos Medicines and look forward to developing novel therapies for patients with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. We believe that Rheos’ proprietary platform and expertise in immunometabolism serve as a strong complement to Roche’s capabilities in this area.”

Source: Rheos pens Roche collab for next-gen immunometabolism research