Roche, Discuva Collaborate

Roche and Discuva Limited announced that they have entered into a worldwide collaboration and licence agreement for the discovery and development of new antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections caused by multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria using Discuva’s proprietary SATIN technology platform.

SATIN (Selective Antibiotic Target IdentificatioN) is an advanced next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics platform applied to unique bacterial transposon libraries. It is particularly suitable for identifying bacterial targets and selecting promising drug development candidates against multi-drug resistant bacteria. 

In reference to the new partnership, Janet Hammond, Head Infectious Diseases for Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), said: “Multi-drug resistant bacteria have become a genuine threat to public health worldwide. We are pleased to be collaborating with the very experienced team at Discuva, and are looking forward to using their unique technology platform to accelerate our efforts in antibiotic discovery and bringing antibiotic drug candidates forward quickly to help patients in need.”

David Williams, CEO of Discuva, commented: “We are delighted to be working with the team at Roche to bring urgently needed new antibiotics to patients. The combination of Discuva’s leading-edge technologies with Roche’s extensive discovery and development expertise creates a real force for changing the way new and innovative medicines are created for patients.” 

Under the terms of the agreement, Discuva will receive an upfront payment of $16 million, research fees and payments on multiple programmes of up to $175 million per product, upon achievement of certain development, commercialization and sales milestones. In addition, Discuva will receive royalties on sales of products originating from this collaboration, which can reach double digit if products are based on Discuva’s proprietary early-stage antibiotic programs.