Arvinas Inks Strategic License Agreement with Genentech

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Arvinas, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Arvinas, LLC), a private biotechnology company creating a new class of drugs based on targeted protein degradation, entered into a license agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, for the development of new therapeutics using Arvinas' novel PROTAC technology. The multi-year strategic license agreement encompasses multiple disease targets.

Under the terms of the agreement, Arvinas will receive an undisclosed upfront payment. Arvinas is eligible to receive development and commercialization milestone payments in excess of $300 million based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones. In addition, Arvinas is eligible to receive tiered-royalties on sales of products resulting from the license agreement. Full financial terms have not been disclosed. At Genentech's discretion, it may elect to expand the collaboration to include additional disease targets for additional consideration.

"We are thrilled to be working with Genentech, a proven expert in drug discovery and development with world class ability to manufacture and commercialize state-of-the-art therapies," said Manuel Litchman, M.D., President and CEO of Arvinas. "Our PROTAC technology represents a completely novel approach to the targeted therapy of cancer and many other diseases, and we are delighted to be working with Genentech on their targets of interest." 

"Genentech has one of the premier R&D organizations in the industry and I am particularly looking forward to working with them to explore fully the potential of our PROTAC protein degradation technology," commented Craig Crews, Ph.D., the L.B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University and Arvinas Chief Scientific Advisor.

PROTACs, or proteolysis-targeting chimeras, are bifunctional small molecules that are designed to target proteins for degradation and removal from a cell. These molecules are intended to induce a cell's own protein-degradation machinery to bind to a particular protein and "label" it for degradation, thus removing that protein from the system entirely. This contrasts to a more traditional drug development approach that inhibits proteins, which provides transient benefit and works on about a quarter of the body's proteins. Arvinas' approach has the potential to radically expand the number of disease-causing proteins that can be targeted.

James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Global Head of Genentech Partnering, commented, "Genentech is very interested in protein degradation as a therapeutic approach to address difficult disease targets. Arvinas's PROTAC technology offers an exciting opportunity to harness the body's own system to degrade pathogenic proteins." 

About Arvinas
Arvinas is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing new small molecules aimed at degrading disease-causing cellular proteins. We are translating these innovative protein degradation approaches into novel drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Many diseases are a result of "rogue," uncontrolled proteins, whose absence could bring great clinical benefit to patients. To address these pathological intracellular proteins, Arvinas is developing a new drug paradigm based on the elimination of these proteins.  Our innovative protein degradation technology uses small molecule drugs to "tag" specific proteins to be degraded by the ubiquitin/proteasome system (UPS), which is responsible for the normal turnover of most proteins within the cell.

Based on groundbreaking research conducted at Yale University by our Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor, Craig Crews, PhD, Arvinas has developed a platform technology to induce the loss of intracellular proteins: Proteolysis-Targeting Chimera (PROTAC). The ability of PROTAC-based drugs to induce protein degradation (instead of protein inhibition) offers the advantage of potentially targeting "undruggable" as well as "druggable" elements of the proteome. This greatly expands our ability to create drugs for many new, previously unapproachable targets. For more information, visit www.arvinas.com.

Arvinas Media Contact
Carolyn Hawley
[email protected]

SOURCE Arvinas

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