Sanofi and Warp Drive Bio extend collaboration

Sanofi and Warp Drive Bio have extended and reshaped their existing collaboration utilizing Warp Drive’s proprietary SMART(TM) (Small Molecule Assisted Receptor Targeting) and Genome Mining platforms to discover novel oncology therapeutics and antibiotics.

Sanofi said Monday it has been a major investor and strategic partner since Warp Drive’s inception in 2012, and Warp Drive have entered into a research collaboration and exclusive license focused on the development of drugs targeting important human oncogenes including RAS, which has one of the highest mutation rates in cancer – and new antibiotics targeting Gram-negative bacteria. Warp Drive Bio retains the rights to deploy its platforms to pursue discovery and development against all other targets, both alone and in collaboration with other companies.

According to a press release, the collaboration is an outgrowth of Sanofi’s Sunrise initiative, a strategic partnership model that seeks to invest in early stage opportunities that align with Sanofi’s expert development and commercialization abilities.

“Our partnership with Warp Drive is a perfect example of open innovation which allows Sanofi to collaborate with innovative companies and combine unique areas of expertise to advance drug development in a meaningful way”, said Elias Zerhouni, M.D., President, Sanofi, Global R&D. “This is an exciting collaboration for Sanofi as it could yield potentially lifesaving oncology and antibiotic therapies for patients by utilizing cutting-edge technology platforms.”

“This reshaped alliance enables joint and independent product development by Warp Drive, an important step in our evolution as we advance a therapeutic pipeline using our proprietary platforms,” said Laurence Reid, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Warp Drive Bio. “Since our inception, Sanofi has been highly supportive of our progress and we are very pleased to reshape our strategic collaboration to focus on novel therapeutics in areas of great unmet need.”

Under the terms of the Agreement, Warp Drive will lead the research collaboration for a period of five years and Sanofi will receive worldwide exclusive licenses to develop and commercialize the candidates discovered during the research term.

Warp Drive is eligible to receive from Sanofi cumulative payments in excess of $750 million across four successful collaboration programs, including an equity investment by Sanofi, research, clinical, and regulatory milestones, and research and development services.

The companies will initially focus on three defined oncology programs targeting different mutants and states of the RAS oncogenic protein. Warp Drive has the option to lead development of the therapeutic candidates from post IND filing up to phase 2 clinical studies, with Sanofi leading development through the filing of new drug applications.  Sanofi will lead global commercial activities on product(s) resulting from the collaboration and Warp Drive has the option to co-commercialize oncology therapeutics in the U.S. market.  Sanofi will manage all ex-US commercial activities and Warp Drive will receive commercial milestones and tiered royalties on product sales.

The antibiotic collaboration will focus on the discovery and development of novel Gram-negative therapeutics and Sanofi will lead all development activities. Sanofi will be responsible for global commercialization of the antibiotic products and will pay Warp Drive research, clinical, and regulatory milestones, plus tiered royalties and commercial milestones based on global sales.

In a separate Statement, Sanofi said it has entered with Innate Pharma into a research collaboration and licensing agreement to apply Innate Pharma’s new proprietary technology to the development of innovative bispecific antibody formats engaging natural killer (NK) cells to kill tumor cells through the activating receptor NKp46.

Sanofi and Innate Pharma will work together on the generation and evaluation of up to two bispecific NK cell engagers, using technology from Innate Pharma and Sanofi’s proprietary bispecific antibody format as well as tumor targets. Under the terms of the license agreement, Sanofi will be responsible for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of products resulting from the research collaboration. Innate Pharma will be eligible to up to €400m in development and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties on net sales.

“Over the past year, Sanofi has launched strategic corporate collaborations in the field of immuno-oncology that exemplify our commitment to open innovation in R&D and have the potential to transform the treatment of cancer,” said Gary Nabel, Chief Scientific Officer, Sanofi. “Working with Innate Pharma, we seek to create new bispecific antibodies that will focus the immune system to kill cancer cells by engaging natural killer cells.”

“There is a lot of excitement around bispecifics in immuno-oncology. By building on our knowledge of the activating receptor NKp46, we have generated a technology to specifically induce tumor killing by NK cells. This new technology platform is complementary to our innovative portfolio of first-in-class antibodies targeting immune checkpoints. We intend to use it for our internal portfolio expansion, as well as through non-exclusive agreements with other companies, such as in this agreement with Sanofi”, said Nicolai Wagtmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Innate Pharma.