Boehringer Ingelheim and 3BP Forge a Multi-Year Collaboration

Boehringer Ingelheim and privately-held 3B Pharmaceuticals GmbH (3BP) forged a multi-yearpeptide-led drug discovery collaboration.

In a brief announcement from Berlin-based 3BP, the smaller company will employ its high-diversity peptide library and hit identification technology on a set of molecular disease targets selected by the larger Boehringer Ingelheim. 3BP said hit compounds identified will be “further optimized and jointly characterized by both companies.”

Financial information related to the collaboration between the two companies was not disclosed.

“We are very pleased to substantially broaden our relationship with Boehringer Ingelheim and confident in adding significant value through our validated peptide hit discovery and medicinal chemistry capabilities,” Ulrich Reineke, Managing Director of 3BP said in a statement.

For 3BP, the deal with Boehringer Ingelheim comes about four months after the company said the first patient had been dosed in a Phase I/II study jointly conducted with Ipsen. The study is examining IPN01087, a first-in-class radionuclide, is a compound that targets cancer cells in patients with advanced solid tumors which express the Neurotensin Receptor Subtype 1. The objective of the Phase I dose-escalation trial is to evaluate the safety and activity, as well as to identify the optimum systemically-administered dose of radiation to treat patients with any of the following solid tumors expressing NTSR1, the companies said at the time. Those tumors include pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumors, Ewing sarcoma and squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, 3BP said.

Reineke said the dosing of the patients is a great milestone for IPN01087, as well as for 3B Pharmaceuticals. He said the company is pleased the compound has entered clinical trials and the company remains “passionate about systemic radiation therapy and its potential to improve patients’ lives.”

For Boehringer Ingelheim, the collaboration with 3BP comes a month after the company exercised an option to receive exclusive rights to a second hepatic disease target emerging from its research collaboration and license agreement with Cambridge, Mass.-based Dicerna. The collaboration, which was first established in October 2017, aims to discover and develop novel GalXC RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of chronic liver diseases, with an initial focus on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. For the companies, this was an option for the second target under the R&D collaboration established in 2017. Under the terms of the agreement, Boehringer Ingelheim will be responsible for future clinical development and commercialization of the therapeutic target. Dicerna is eligible to receive development and commercial milestone payments, and royalties on worldwide net sales, the companies said in a joint announcement.

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