Forma Therapeutics enters into two Big Pharma alliances in succession for the New Year!

 

RNase/RNase inhibitor protein-protein interaction. Dcrjsr http://bit.ly/zRrlaz

We mentioned Forma Therapeutics in two previous articles on this blog. In one article, we focused on Forma’s R&D efforts in discovering small-molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions (PPIs).  The other article included a discussion on Forma’s efforts in cancer metabolism.

This month–January 2012–when the new year had barely started–Forma signed two new Big Pharma alliances, covering both of these areas.

On January 5, Forma announced that it had entered into an R&D collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, focusing on discovery and development of small molecule drugs to address oncology-relevant PPIs. Under the terms of the agreement, Forma will receive a total of $65 million in up-front payments and research funding, and could be eligible for up to $750 million in pre-commercial milestone payments for development programs resulting from the collaboration.

As with the Genentech deal in cancer metabolism that we discussed in an earlier article, the new Boehringer Ingelheim agreement provides Forma and its shareholders several opportunities to realize early return through assets developed under the collaboration. However, details of how this might occur were not disclosed. According to a January 6, 2012 article in BioWorld Today, flexibility and liquidity (without the need for a IPO or an acquisition) are importance goal of Forma’s business development activity in general. Nevertheless, Forma CEO Steven Tregay does not rule out a future acquisition, and says that large pharmaceutical companies are interested in such a deal.

On January 10, 2012, Forma announced an exclusive alliance with Janssen Biotech (a Johnson & Johnson company), in which the companies will collaborate on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel small molecule drug candidates that target mechanisms of tumor metabolism.

Under the terms of the agreement, Forma will discover and develop drugs against a panel of tumor metabolism targets. Forma may receive up to $700 million in project and milestone funding. In addition, FORMA may receive royalties on revenues from products commercialized as a result of the collaboration. Moreover, if certain milestones are achieved during the initial phase of the collaboration, FORMA will have the opportunity to co-develop and maintain North American commercial rights to one program selected by Janssen. The two companies may also expand the collaboration to include other targets, including those in areas beyond tumor metabolism.

Once again, Dr. Tregay sees the opportunity to maintain North American rights to a product resulting from the collaboration as in line with the company’s strategy to create long-term shareholder value within Forma.

In December 2011, Forma moved its operations from Cambridge MA to Watertown MA, in the process gaining double the amount of space it had before. This will allow for the company’s growth in new internal and partnered R&D projects, and for the growth in staff that this will entail.

As we discussed in earlier articles on this blog, PPIs have been considered “undruggable” targets. However, given that researchers have been able to discover and in at least one case develop small-molecule agents to address this class of targets, it is best to think of this area as a premature technology. As discussed in our July 27, 2011 article, Forma believes that it has developed a set of enabling technologies to move the PPI field up the technology curve, similar to what happened to the monoclonal antibody field in the 1990s. Apparently, several partner organizations–not only Boehringer Ingelheim, but also Novartis and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society–agreed with Forma enough to invest in partnerships in this area.

Forma is not the only Boston-area biotech to have a major program in discovery of drugs that modulate PPIs. Ensemble Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA), has internal programs and partnerships in discovery of small-molecule compounds that target PPIs, and Aileron Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA), which we discussed in our November 27th 2009 and our August 24th 2010 blog articles, is developing peptide compounds designed to target PPIs in internal and partnered programs.

As for cancer metabolism, Forma is once again not the only Boston-area biotech to have major programs in drug discovery in this area. We have discussed Agios Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in that area, in our December 31, 2009, April 23, 2010, and November 30, 2011  Biopharmconsortium Blog articles.

In our December 22, 2010 blog article, we discussed the field of intermediary metabolism, asking “Will intermediary metabolism be a hot field of biology again?” In the 1920s through the 1950s, intermediary metabolism was a hot field of biology, but the field was eclipsed by molecular biology starting with the Watson and Crick paper in 1953. However, largely as the result of research that combines intermediary metabolism and molecular biology, metabolism is coming to the forefront of biomedicine again. In the area of cancer metabolism, researchers such as signal-transduction pioneer (and Agios scientific founder) Lewis Cantley have been combining the two fields in order to understand cancer disease pathways, with implications for drug discovery and development.

All of the companies mentioned in this article are research-stage companies, with no drug candidates yet beyond the preclinical stage. The strategies of these companies, and the compounds that have resulted from them, thus must be validated in clinical studies. Nevertheless, we are encouraged by these companies’ success so far, and the interest show in them and their science and technology platforms by large pharmaceutical companies. The success of these companies also provides an object lesson–premature technologies and neglected fields may at least in some cases provide opportunities for drug developers.

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