Experienced Life Sciences Professional | Former Biotech C-suite Executive & Healthcare Investment Banker
I love "pat-on-the-back" moments... especially when Chris De Savi (a highly insightful scientist) from Curie.Bio shows a deep understanding (maybe a deep interest?) of new modalities I started to look into about 12-15 months ago: PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras (#PROTACs) and Molecular Glue Degraders (#MGDs) These new modalities are quite fascinating as they will likely expand the targeting space of existing and new drugs. As Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a leader in MGD development, rightly puts it: ➡ PROTACs could allow to "redrug the druggable", while ➡ MGDs could allow to "drug the undruggable" Very recently, Sudhir Nambiar posted a useful post (https://lnkd.in/eKK8TKEv) with a list of selected PROTACs and MGDs programs in clinical trials. 🙏 The trained eye will have noticed that most clinical trials are in oncology, most often in 3rd or 4th line indications. The reason for that seems quite simple: toxicity side effects linked to protein degradation has been limiting its applications so far. As such, they have mostly been developed extremely late-stage diseases, where toxicity is unfortunately less of an issue... For that reason, I am quite excited to follow the work of companies such as Kymera Therapeutics (focusing on PROTACs) and Monte Rosa Therapeutics (focusing on MGDs) as their pipelines extend beyond oncology... and into auto-immune, inflammatory and neurology diseases. Big Pharmas and Big Biotechs are increasingly investigating the potential of such new modalities, either internally or through collaborations. 🔬💲 As an example, Roche recently announced a strategic collaboration with Monte Rosa Therapeutics to discover novel MGDs with an upfront payment of $50 million and potential future payments exceeding $2 billion. #biotech #lifesciences #mergersandacquisitions
It is truly fascinating to witness the remarkable potential of PROTACs and MGDs in pushing the boundaries of drug development. It is worth keeping a close watch on the groundbreaking work of Kymera Therapeutics and Monte Rosa Therapeutics as they venture beyond the field of oncology and explore new disease areas. The future of life sciences is undeniably promising, with endless possibilities for innovation and advancements. #innovation #lifesciences
CSO Partner @ Curie.Bio | Biotech Venture Creation
11moInduced proximity is HUGE. We will see our first bifunctional degraders get FDA approval over next two years. Followed by further exciting clinical data from the 1st bifunctional degraders for immunology disease (viz.KT-474 IRAK4). The field needs to fully exploit this modality to target traditionally undrugged highly validated targets (viz. transcription factors) and avoid the me too mentality - how many ER and AR degraders do we need? The emerging area of rational MG design - there the future innovation will come from non CRBN based molecular glue approaches. Great post Mathieu Losguardi, I will respectfully disagree that toxicity is an issue associated with TPD, like any new modality - ADCs, siRNA, bifunctional it takes a while to understand pre-clinical and clinical safety - I foresee after we get more approvals outside of oncology the field will take on more targets outside of oncology (keep following Kymera Therapeutics ).