NEW YORK – Tavros Therapeutics and Vividion Therapeutics on Wednesday announced a five-year collaboration to discover or target new cancer biomarkers.
For its part, Durham, North Carolina-based Tavros will use functional and computational genomics platforms to identify new therapeutic targets by analyzing tumor vulnerabilities and gauge whether these targets can be drugged with existing molecules.
Vividion, an operationally independent subsidiary of Bayer based in San Diego, will pay Tavros $17.5 million upfront in exchange for four initial target programs. Tavros is also eligible to receive up to $430.5 million upon meeting certain preclinical, clinical, and commercial milestones and can receive royalty payments in the low-single digits should any of its programs generate sales. Finally, Vividion can also exercise an option to pursue five more targets for an additional $482 million.
"This collaboration brings together two orthogonal, highly innovative, and synergistic approaches to drug discovery," Vividion CEO Jeffrey Hatfield said in a statement. "Vividion has the ability to find and drug previously unknown, or cryptic, functional binding pockets on oncology and immunology targets of high interest, while Tavros has the potential to uncover previously unknown synthetic vulnerabilities or dependencies in deadly tumor cells."