Roche and Flare Therapeutics are igniting a partnership worth more than $1.8 billion in biobucks with hopes of discovering new small molecule cancer treatments via previously undruggable transcription factor targets.
The Big Pharma is paying $70 million cash to tap into the biotech’s platform—proteomic and mass spectrometry tech powered by Flare’s library of electrophilic compounds—according to a Nov. 12 release.
Flare will lead the charge on discovery and preclinical activities, while Roche will conduct more advanced development and commercialization of potential products arising from the partnership.
Beyond the $70 million upfront payment, Flare could also pocket milestone payments exceeding $1.8 billion, plus royalties.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech also holds the right to co-fund development for one target in exchange for higher U.S. royalties on the program.
"This collaboration will accelerate the expansion of our capabilities, enabling us to develop treatments for transcription factors implicated in indications with high unmet needs,” Rob Sims, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and co-founder of Flare, said in the release. “Together with Roche's expertise, our objective is to successfully pursue challenging transcription factor targets, with the ultimate goal of providing novel interventions for patients who are not currently served by standard-of-care therapies.”
Flare emerged in 2021 with an $82 million series A, turning up the heat in 2023 with a $123 million series B fundraise and big-name backers including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novartis. The biotech is targeting transcription factors, proteins that control gene expression and play a key part in cancer and other disease development.
Since the 2023 financing round, Flare’s lead program FX-909 has moved into a phase 1 clinical trial for patients with advanced urothelial cancer. The asset is designed to be a first-in-class orally bioavailable small molecule inhibitor of PPARG, a transcription factor that regulates luminal lineage in urothelial cancer, according to Flare.
The biotech’s second program takes aim at prostate cancer and is expected to enter Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling studies soon.
Transcription factors are considered prime therapeutic targets in oncology, but their complex structure has made them extremely difficult to drug, Sims explained to Fierce Biotech in a prior interview. Because conventional rules for drug design don’t apply to transcription factors, the Flare team is thinking outside the box, using chemoproteomics, functional biochemistry, covalent chemistry and genetic insights to gain a deeper understanding of the structural foundations that make transcription factors function.
This knowledge was applied to Flare’s drug discovery platform, which aims to identify new druggable pockets within transcription factor complexes, or what Sims calls “switch sites.” Finding these sites helps Flare figure out where to drug and how to tune gene expression to discover small-molecule precision medicines.