NEW YORK – Bayer said on Wednesday that it has partnered with Bicycle Therapeutics to use its drug discovery and development platform to advance radionuclide therapies for certain oncology targets.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bicycle will receive $45 million upfront to discover and develop bicyclic peptides. Bayer will be solely responsible for preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization of resulting radionuclide therapy candidates. Bicycle is also eligible for development and commercial milestone payments of up to $1.7 billion, as well as mid-single to double-digit tiered royalties from sales of products.
Bicycle will conduct drug discovery and development work using its platform, which produces linear peptides nine to 20 amino acids in length curved into a double-looped, or "bi-cyclic," structure around a central chemical scaffold. Bicycle radio-conjugates comprise a tumor-specific antigen, a non-cleavable linker, and a radioisotope payload. According to Bayer, the bicyclic peptides bind to targets with high affinity and selectivity, with high tumor penetration and fast excretion from healthy organs.
"We believe our bicyclic peptide platform, coupled with Bayer's scale and expertise in developing radiopharmaceuticals, has the potential to deliver improved clinical outcomes for patients with cancer," Bicycle CEO Kevin Lee said in a statement. "We look forward to collaborating with Bayer to bring forth new potential first-in-class radiopharmaceutical treatments based on Bicycles."
Cambridge, UK-based Bicycle has other preclinical-stage collaborations to develop radio-conjugates with Novartis and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).