Gilead Sciences and biotechnology company Terray Therapeutics have formed a partnership to discover and develop novel small molecule therapies targeting multiple diseases.
The financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.
The partnership will use Terray Therapeutics’ tNova drug discovery platform, which integrates high-throughput chemical experimentation, computational analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery.
Using an iterative approach, the platform applies AI-powered methods to a vast library of purpose-built, quantitative, structure-activity data. This enables the identification of optimal molecules to tackle complex drug discovery challenges.
In October, the biotechnology company secured $120m in a Series B funding round to support its tNova platform and internal programmes.
Gilead Sciences research executive vice president Flavius Martin said: “Next-generation, AI-driven platforms using custom-generated large, relevant data sets will serve as important tools in our efforts to shape the future of drug discovery in our ongoing pursuit of innovative treatments across our therapeutic areas of focus.”
Under the agreement, Terray Therapeutics will use its tNova platform to discover and develop small molecule compounds for targets chosen by Gilead Sciences.
If Gilead Sciences exercises its option to exclusively license these compounds, the American biopharmaceutical company will handle further development and commercialisation.
In return, Terray Therapeutics will receive an upfront payment and is eligible for milestone payments tied to preclinical, clinical, and sales achievements.
Additionally, the biotechnology company will earn tiered royalties on net sales of products commercialised by Gilead Sciences through the collaboration.
Terray Therapeutics CEO Jacob Berlin said: “We’re very excited to put tNova’s unique blend of experimentation and computation to work alongside the deep expertise of our collaborators at Gilead to find transformational small molecule therapeutics that bring relief to patients in need.”
In a parallel development, Gilead Sciences secured breakthrough therapy designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy).
Trodelvy is indicated for the treatment of adults with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) whose disease has progressed after platinum-based chemotherapy.
The breakthrough therapy designation was granted based on results from the global Phase 2 TROPiCS-03 study ES-SCLC cohort, which demonstrated promising outcomes with Trodelvy as a second-line treatment for ES-SCLC.
In January this year, Trodelvy failed to meet the primary endpoint of overall survival (OS) in the Phase 3 EVOKE-01 lung cancer trial.
