Roche, Blueprint Medicines Enter $1.7-Billion Deal for Anti-Cancer Drug

Roche and Blueprint Medicines Corporation, a precision therapy company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, announced on July 14, 2020 that they are entering into a licensing and collaboration agreement for the co-commercialization rights to pralsetinib, Blueprint Medicine’s investigational, once-daily oral precision therapy for the treatment of RET-altered non-small cell lung cancer, medullary thyroid cancer, and other types of thyroid cancer, for up to $1.7 billion.

Under the agreement, Blueprint Medicines will obtain an upfront cash payment of $675 million, a $100 million equity investment in Blueprint Medicines’ common stock, and up to $927 million in contingent development, regulatory, and sales-based milestones and royalties on net product sales outside the United States, according to a Roche press release. The companies will share global development expenses based on pre-specified cost-sharing percentages and will share profits and losses in the US.

Pralsetinib will join Roche’s already approved lung cancer medicines including, Alecensa (alectinib), Rozlytrek (entrectinib), Tecentriq (atezolizumab), Avastin (bevacizumab), and Tarceva (erlotinib), and will aid in the company’s understanding of driver mutations in lung cancer, the press release said.

“We are very excited to enter into this collaboration with Blueprint Medicines, a partner we have already been working with for four years, with the goal of bringing a potentially transformative treatment option to patients with rare RET-altered cancers as quickly as possible,” said James Sabry, head of Roche Pharma Partnering, in the press release. “In bringing pralsetinib to patients, we will leverage our global reach and expertise in oncology, as well as our capabilities in diagnostics and the use of real-world data toward our aim of providing personalized treatments for patients."

“With Roche’s global reach and unparalleled expertise in personalized healthcare, this collaboration will accelerate our ability to bring pralsetinib to patients with significant medical needs around the world and expand development of pralsetinib across multiple treatment settings where there is potential to benefit even broader patient populations,” said Jeff Albers, CEO of Blueprint Medicines, in the press release.

Source: Roche