Insights
Welcome to Ergo Bio Insights, a resource hub that offers insights into the forefront of biotechnology innovation. We will discuss new drug development and bridge the gap between science and business. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date!
Predicting the difficulty and associated costs for drug development can be a challenge. However, there are efforts to systematically examine the expenditure and probability of success of clinical trials, as related to the study phase and therapeutic area.
We simulated the likelihood of approval and associated expenses for hypothetical pipelines across different therapeutic areas. Emerging from this analysis were indication-related characteristic distributions, but the results could be refined by repeating the approach with a higher quality dataset.
Molecular glues like PROTACs have gained considerable excitement as a therapeutic modality. Rather than inhibition of protein activity, which can be suboptimal, these drugs facilitate the elimination of aberrant proteins with the proteasomal pathway.
Arvinas is leading in the clinical development of protein degraders, with others like Kymera Therapeutics, Nurix Therapeutics, and C4 Therapeutics.
Alternative methods of protein degradation are emerging, including those ligating complexes in the lysosomal pathway or using genetic engineering to enable switchable expression.
Atomic resolution of intramolecular and intermolecular interactions are highly sought after to better understand biological processes and aid drug development.
DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 outperformed all other groups at the protein structure prediction competition known as CASP. The assessment results are briefly evaluated.
Contrary to mainstream media, protein folding is not yet a solved problem. However, deep learning algorithms have accelerated our ability to accurately predict structures for well-behaved proteins.
Biogen-Denali collaboration deal
Biogen agreed with Denali Therapeutics to co-develop and co-commercialize small-molecule inhibitors of leucine-rich kinase 2 (LRRK2) for Parkinson's disease. Biogen also reserved an option to the antibody-based, blood-brain barrier transport technology from Denali. Biogen is to provide an upfront payment of $560M, equity investment of $465M, and milestone payments up to $1.125B.
In contrast, Denali had exclusively licensed the LRRK2 program from Genentech for an upfront payment of $8.5M, technology transfer fee of $1.5M, and milestone payments up to $315M. In considering the recent Biogen agreement, Denali effectively traded a call option on the LRRK2 program with Genentech and later on secured a massively successful deal.