Gilead and Tentarix Strike Three Cancer And Inflammation Partnership Deals

Gilead Sciences and Tentarix Biotherapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on targeted, multifunctional, conditional therapies, announced three multi-year collaborations on Aug. 15, 2023. The collaborations will use Tentarix’s Tentacles platform to discover and develop multifunctional, conditional protein therapeutics for oncology and inflammatory diseases. According to a company press release, these molecules will have the potential to conditionally target immune cells related to disease pathways without activating other immune cells that may create adverse events.

Tentarix will receive upfront payments and an equity investment from Gilead totaling $66 million across all three collaborations. Additionally, Gilead has the option to acquire up to three select Tentarix subsidiaries containing the programs developed under the collaborations for $80 million per subsidiary, placing the total value of the deal at approximately $306 million.

“At Gilead, a key area of our research strategy is addressing immune dysregulation in oncology and inflammatory diseases,” said Flavius Martin, executive vice-president, Research, Gilead Sciences, in the release. “This early-stage collaboration with Tentarix will be highly synergistic to our ongoing efforts, building upon our growing strength in protein therapeutics, and may provide access to next-generation, multi-specific biologics.”

“This collaboration is part of our strategy to join forces with innovators, like Gilead, who can help us rapidly advance new medicines to the clinic,” said Paul Grayson, president and CEO, Tentarix Biotherapeutics, in the release. “Our technology has great promise and collaborating with Gilead to build out this pipeline helps broaden the development of multi-functional, antibody-based therapeutics, providing an excellent mechanism to validate our science with the ultimate goal of bringing these potential medicines to patients faster.”

Source: Gilead Sciences