Roche has secured its third antibody-drug conjugate pact of the year, this time agreeing to hand $36 million in upfront payments to Oxford BioTherapeutics.
The agreement will also see U.K.-based Oxford in line for milestone payments that could exceed $1 billion, along with a slice of the royalties from potential sales. The “multiple” oncology targets for the collaboration will be identified by Oxford’s OGAP-Verify discovery platform, which is designed to “enable greater sensitivity and thereby the selection of targets with improved attributes for drug development,” according to the biotech’s March 19 release.
Once the targets have been selected by Oxford, the two companies will validate them together before Roche takes over for R&D and, the pair hopes, on to commercialization.
“By combining Roche’s expertise in discovering and developing transformative therapeutics with OBT’s innovative target discovery platform, we aim to unlock new possibilities in cancer treatment,” Boris Zaïtra, head of corporate business Development at Roche, said in the release. “This partnership underscores our commitment to advancing potentially first-in-class antibody-based therapeutics.”
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Roche's Chugai turns to Swiss biotech Araris for ADC deal potentially worth over $780M
Roche, which put billions on the line a year ago across several ADC pacts, kicked off 2025 by returning to Innovent Biologics for a DLL3-targeted ADC. Days later, Roche's Chugai Pharmaceutical tapped Zurich-based Araris Biotech to develop new ADCs in a deal worth up to $780 million.
The Swiss oncology major is far from the first pharma to take an interest in Oxford, whose partners have included the likes of Boehringer Ingelheim, Amgen, ImmunoGen, Zymeworks and WuXi.
“This collaboration builds on our efforts to enhance, validate and advance the discovery of oncology targets, and we look forward to leveraging Roche’s deep expertise to translate these insights into potential new treatments for patients,” Oxford’s CEO Christian Rohlff, Ph.D., said in the release. “Our discovery philosophy is very patient-centric and Roche’s strength to integrate pharma and diagnostics is unique in the industry.”