Synthekine Inc., an engineered cytokine therapeutics company, announced a worldwide collaboration with Sanofi to develop and commercialize IL-10 receptor agonists for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. The collaboration will focus on advancing Synthekine’s multiple approaches to optimizing IL-10, with the goal of developing selective agonists that expand therapeutic index.
“We look forward to working with Synthekine, a leader in targeted cytokine engineering with outstanding technologies and scientific team,” said John Bertin, Global Head of Inflammation and Immunology Research at Sanofi. “IL-10 plays a key role in immune regulation, and this collaboration aimed at developing precisely tailored IL-10 therapies reaffirms our commitment to deliver the next wave of novel therapies to treat inflammatory diseases.”
“We are excited to partner with Sanofi, both a global biopharmaceutical leader and a leader in immunology, on IL-10, a high-value target with tremendous potential to regulate and suppress inflammatory immune responses,” said Debanjan Ray, Chief Executive Officer of Synthekine. “This strategic collaboration will advance our broad efforts on IL-10 to capture the full therapeutic potential of this important target and leverages both our cytokine partial agonist platform and our surrogate cytokine agonist platform.”
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Under the terms of the agreement, Synthekine and Sanofi will collaborate on research activities up to a defined point of preclinical development. Sanofi will assume sole responsibility for subsequent preclinical, clinical, and commercial activities for the IL-10 therapeutics. Synthekine will receive a $40 million upfront payment from Sanofi and will be eligible for additional payments including potential preclinical, development, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as tiered royalties on net sales.
IL-10 is an important immune-regulatory cytokine that attracted substantial clinical interest in the past for use as an immunosuppressive agent. Alongside promising efficacy, however, clinical studies of recombinant human IL-10 showed dose-limiting toxicity, due in part to IL-10’s pleiotropic activity on various immune cells. Synthekine is harnessing the immunosuppressive activity of IL-10 while engineering out its immunostimulatory effects, and thus decoupling efficacy and toxicity.
SOURCE : BusinessWire