Bicycle Therapeutics and Novartis in $1.7bn cancer remedies goal

Bicycle Therapeutics has entered into a strategic collaboration with Novartis AG worth up to $1.7billion to discover and develop multiple targeted radioligand therapies in oncology.

Bicycle will use its proprietary phage platform to discover Bicycles to be developed into Bicycle radio-conjugates (BRCs). Novartis will be responsible for further development, manufacture and commercialisation of the BRCs.

Novartis, which is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, will fund all pre-clinical and clinical development and commercialisation activities. Bicycle will receive a $50m upfront payment and is eligible for development and commercial-based milestone payments totalling up to $1.7bn. Bicycle will also be eligible to receive tiered royalties on Bicycle-based medicines commercialised by Novartis.

Bicycle, which is based at the Portway Building on Granta Park and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a novel class of medicines, referred to as Bicycles, for diseases that are underserved by existing therapeutics.

Bicycles are fully synthetic short peptides constrained with small molecule scaffolds to form two loops that stabilise their structural geometry. This constraint facilitates target binding with high affinity and selectivity, making Bicycles attractive candidates for drug development.

The Bicycle technology arose from research by Sir Greg Winter, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for his pioneering work in phage display. This technology has led to major therapeutic advances in antibody-based therapeutics, and bicyclic peptide (Bicycle) drug discovery and development.

Sir Greg co-founded Bicycle Therapeutics in 2009 with Prof Christian Heinis, who is the co-director of the Swiss NCCR Chemical Biology.

“This collaboration builds on the ground-breaking clinical work we have been doing in the toxin conjugate field and provides new and additional validation for this unique technology,” said Kevin Lee, CEO of Bicycle Therapeutics.

“We look forward to working closely with Novartis to pioneer the discovery and development of potential new cutting-edge radiopharmaceutical cancer treatments based on Bicycles.

“We believe the properties of Bicycles make them well-suited for the development of precision-guided radiopharmaceuticals and represents the next leg in the application of our proprietary discovery platform in oncology.”