Roche, Aileron Expand Stapled Peptide Alliance

Roche is expanding its collaboration with Aileron Therapeutics to discover, develop and commercialize stapled peptide drugs. The two companies will now begin work on a third program focused on inflammatory diseases. The collaboration has a potential value of $1.1 billion and encompasses as many as five programs of strategic importance to Roche.

Also, Aileron has achieved a key milestone under the collaboration, triggering a milestone payment related to in vivo proof-of-concept against one of Roche’s targets. Financial details were not being disclosed.

“In our first program, this collaboration has already demonstrated in vivo proof-of-concept in multiple models, and shown novel mechanistic capabilities,” said Jean-Jacques Garaud, global head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development. “We now want to expand our work with Aileron and broaden the impact of Stapled Peptides in our portfolio to create drugs for disease targets that are intractable using currently available modalities.”

“We have now demonstrated in conjunction with a world-class drug development partner that — as we expected — our Stapled Peptide drugs are capable of addressing targets, in manner and effect, that have eluded small molecules and antibodies,” said Joseph A. Yanchik, III, president and chief executive officer of Aileron. “Given the potential impact of this technology and the associated scrutiny, it was essential for us to set a high bar and show early success with a partnered drug discovery program. I also want to acknowledge the tremendous work done by the combined Aileron-Roche team over the last year to deliver this rapid progress and look forward to our efforts to bring these drugs to patients.”