Tavros Therapeutics inks deal with Bayer unit on targeted oncology programs

US precision oncology start-up Tavros Therapeutics and Vividion Therapeutics, a biopharma company that was snapped by German pharma major Bayer (BAYN: DE) last year, have entered into a collaboration to discover or target four oncology targets across an initial five-year term.

Shares of Bayer, which paid an upfront of $1.5 billion for Vividion, were up more than 2% at 49.54 euros following the announcement.

Tavros leverages its functional and computational genomics technologies to uncover unique vulnerabilities within tumors to discover novel targets and biomarkers in areas of high unmet clinical need and identify novel clinical positioning strategies for existing molecules. This partnership allows Tavros to expand the actionability of its platform into a new target space by pairing its platform with Vividion’s ability to find and drug previously unknown, or cryptic, functional binding pockets on oncology and immunology targets of high interest.