Roche, Aileron in Peptide Pact

Aileron Therapeutics and Roche have entered into a collaboration to discover, develop and commercialize a new class of drugs called Stapled Peptide Therapeutics. The two companies will work to develop drug candidates against as many as five undisclosed targets selected from Roche’s key therapeutic areas, which include oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS.

Roche will provide Aileron funding of at least $25 million in technology access fees and R&D support. Aileron is eligible to receive as much as $1.1 billion in payments based on discovery, development, regulatory and commercialization milestones, if candidates are developed against all five targets. Aileron will also receive royalties on future sales for any marketed products that result from the collaboration.

“This alliance with Roche validates the broad potential for our Stapled Peptide platform across multiple therapeutic areas and classes of targets and also provides Aileron with capital to advance our platform and internal drug development pipeline,” said Joseph A. Yanchik, III, president and chief executive officer of Aileron. “We took our time to carefully consider several opportunities for our first industry collaboration, and believe that Roche is an ideal partner for Aileron because of its history with peptide therapeutics and its commitment to tackling difficult disease targets.”