Tavros Therapeutics and Vividion Therapeutics Announce Strategic Collaboration to Discover and Enhance Targeted Oncology Programs
Tavros Therapeutics, Inc., a precision oncology platform company leading the new frontier of targeted therapies exploiting tumors’ genetic vulnerabilities, and Vividion Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company utilizing novel discovery technologies to unlock high value, traditionally undruggable targets with precision therapeutics for devastating cancers and immune disorders, and a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, announced the companies have entered into a collaboration agreement to discover or target four oncology targets across an initial five-year term.
Tavros leverages its functional and computational genomics technologies to uncover unique vulnerabilities within tumors to discover novel targets and biomarkers in areas of high unmet clinical need and identify novel clinical positioning strategies for existing molecules.
Under the terms of the agreement, Tavros will receive $17.5 million in a cash upfront payment from Vividion, and is eligible to receive up to $430.5 million in potential future payments based on the achievement of prespecified preclinical, clinical development, and commercial milestones, as well as low-single-digit royalties on sales of certain potential programs. Vividion has options to pursue up to five additional targets with up to $482 million in potential additional future payments.
“The future of cancer treatment lies in the precision targeting of therapies in the optimal clinical settings. This partnership allows Tavros to expand the actionability of our platform into a new target space by pairing our precision oncology platform with Vividion’s unmatched ability to drug the traditionally undruggable,” said Tavros CEO and co-founder Eoin McDonnell, Ph.D. “We’re thrilled to launch our work with Vividion and harness our combined expertise to reach patients with difficult-to-treat cancers by uncovering and drugging the next generation of high-value targets and augmenting the efficacy of emerging compounds.”
“Despite decades of effort, many targets remain inaccessible to traditional small molecule drugs, and many others have uncertain relevance to disease,” said Vividion Therapeutics CEO Jeffrey Hatfield. “This collaboration brings together two orthogonal, highly innovative and synergistic approaches to drug discovery that will address both of these challenges. Vividion has the ability to find and drug previously unknown, or cryptic, functional binding pockets on oncology and immunology targets of high interest, while Tavros has the potential to uncover previously unknown synthetic vulnerabilities or dependencies in deadly tumor cells. We believe this powerful combination of leading-edge technologies has the potential to deliver multiple breakthrough discoveries for cancer patients in need.”