Roche Holding AGRoche licenses Dualitas' bispecific discovery engine and will handle development/commercialization, adding novel immunology/inflammation antibody candidates to its pipeline.

Dualitas Therapeutics announced a research collaboration and license agreement with Roche to discover and develop novel bispecific antibodies for immunology and inflammation diseases using Dualitas' DualScreen Bispecific Discovery Engine. Under the deal, Dualitas will functionally screen more than 300,000 novel bispecific combinations, which the company describes as one of the largest-scale bispecific discovery endeavors, while Roche will handle all subsequent preclinical development, regulatory, manufacturing and commercial activities. Dualitas will receive $36.5 million in upfront payments and is eligible for research, development and commercial milestone payments plus tiered royalties for a potential total deal value of up to $1 billion. Forbes Huang, co-founder, chief operating officer and chief business officer of Dualitas, called the partnership a first-of-its-kind collaboration to functionally screen and develop novel proximity bispecific antibodies at a scale previously unachievable. Boris L. Zaïtra, Head of Corporate Business Development at Roche, said bispecific antibodies remain central to Roche's portfolio strategy across many disease areas, and Karim Dabbagh, chief executive officer and board member of Dualitas, said the collaboration underscores the potential of the company's technologies to identify bispecific antibodies that harness novel proximity mechanisms.
Roche Holding AGRoche licenses Dualitas' bispecific discovery engine and will handle development/commercialization, adding novel immunology/inflammation antibody candidates to its pipeline.
Dualitas secures a Roche collaboration with $36.5M upfront and up to $1B in milestones/royalties for its bispecific antibody discovery platform.