Orionis Biosciences partners with Genentech on glue meds

Privately-held US genome-scale drug discovery company Orionis Biosciences has announced a second multi-year collaboration with Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche (ROG: SIX), to discover small-molecule monovalent glue medicines for novel and challenging targets in oncology.

Orionis announced its first collaboration with Genentech, to discover novel small-molecule medicines for challenging targets in major disease areas, including oncology and neurodegeneration, in September 2023. At that time, Orionis received an upfront of $47 million and became eligible for development milestones, as well as commercial and net sales milestone payments that could exceed $2 billion and a tiered royalty on the sales of collaboration products.

Orionis’s small-molecule Allo-Glue platform integrates multiple proprietary technologies to advance the discovery and design of molecular glues for highly challenging disease targets. It combines advanced chemical biology tools, engineered cellular assay systems, custom-built high-throughput robotic automation and specialized artificial intelligence infrastructure, and enables the generation and analysis of hundreds of millions of in-cell protein interaction events.