NEW YORK – Allarity Therapeutics and Oncoheroes Biosciences said on Monday that they have inked a licensing deal to develop two of Allarity's precision oncology therapeutics for pediatric cancer patients.
Under the terms of the agreement, Oncoheroes will have exclusive global rights to develop the pan-TKI dovitinib and the PARP inhibitor stenoparib as treatments for biomarker-selected pediatric cancer patients, and Allarity will receive an undisclosed upfront licensing fee and regulatory milestone payments in exchange. Should either of the drugs enter the commercial market for pediatric cancers, Allarity will have an option to buy back the pediatric field rights, but will receive further milestone and royalty payments if it forgoes that option. The firms have not disclosed the payment amounts.
With the new rights to dovitinib and stenoparib, Oncoheroes will be responsible for conducting clinical trials evaluating the agents in pediatric cancers, and Allarity will supply the drugs at cost. Additionally, Allarity will help develop its drug response predictor, or DRP, companion diagnostic tests alongside dovitinib and stenoparib as tools to screen pediatric patients for treatment eligibility.
According to Steve Carchedi, Allarity's CEO, licensing the agents to Oncoheroes in pediatric cancer allows Allarity to prioritize adult cancers. The agreement comes several weeks after Allarity submitted a new drug application to the US Food and Drug Administration for dovitinib for third-line treatment of renal cell carcinoma patients selected by Allarity's Dovitinib-DRP companion diagnostic, for which the firm filed for premarket FDA approval last April. In partnership with Oncoheroes, Allarity is now planning a clinical trial to evaluate dovitinib for Dovitinib-DRP-selected pediatric osteosarcoma patients, too. The agent outperformed control treatment in two preclinical pediatric osteosarcoma studies, according to the firm.
As for the PARP inhibitor stenoparib, Allarity is currently evaluating the agent in a Phase II ovarian cancer clinical trial alongside its Stenoparib-DRP companion diagnostic test, which it is using to select patients and ideally show that stenoparib improves clinical benefit versus existing PARP inhibitors.