MOMA Therapeutics and Roche Announce Five-Year Discovery Collaboration

MOMA Therapeutics have announced a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with Roche.

This partnership provides Roche with access to MOMA’s proprietary KnowledgeBase platform for the identification and prosecution of a certain number of novel drug targets involved in promoting cancer cell growth and survival.

MOMA’s KnowledgeBase comprises integrated structure-function capabilities, advanced lead-finding technologies and computation-enabled lead optimisation. It was built upon the concept that functionally related targets lacking sequence homology still possess three dimensional structural motifs that can be exploited to produce highly impactful therapies. To date, MOMA has utilised this bespoke platform to accelerate drug discovery in the ATPase target class, a class with a high number of genetically validated targets for which industry efforts to identify therapeutically viable drugs have been hampered by the extent of dynamic protein motion.                

“Given its deep expertise and global footprint in oncology, Roche represents an ideal collaborator with whom to further advance the application of MOMA’s platform in a way that impacts patients’ lives. The vision for this collaboration was crafted jointly with Roche to enable each party to bring its strengths in pursuit of this shared goal. It also contributes to the long-term sustainability of MOMA’s core focus as we advance our rich pipeline of precision oncology programs to the clinic,” said Asit Parikh, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer of MOMA.

Through the collaboration, MOMA will receive $66 million as an upfront cash payment and is also eligible to receive discovery, development, and commercialisation milestone payments potentially exceeding US$2 billion, as well as tiered royalties. MOMA will be primarily responsible for all activities for selected targets through to development candidate confirmation, whereas Roche will be responsible for IND-enabling activities and clinical development and commercialisation. Additionally, if multiple collaboration assets reach pivotal clinical studies, MOMA will receive a right to co-fund late-stage development of one product in exchange for increased royalties in the US on this product.

“We are excited to join forces with MOMA, combining our leadership in oncology with MOMA’s deep expertise in drug discovery for difficult-to-drug and novel targets in oncology. The broader field of cancer dependencies is of high importance for Roche and we are looking forward to further deepening our knowledge and discovering novel targets involved in cancer cell growth and survival leveraging MOMA’s innovative platform,” added James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., global head of pharma partnering, Roche.