BRIEF—Major novel RAS inhibitors collaboration pulls in Novartis

Sixth Element Capital (6EC), a UK based fund manager established to manage investments for the £70 million ($90.4 million) CRT Pioneer Fund (CPF), and the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute have reached a multi-year agreement with Swiss pharma giant Novartis to progress development of novel RAS inhibitors, discovered by the Institute’s Drug Discovery Unit for hard to treat cancers.

Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will collaborate with the Beatson team to further develop the RAS inhibitors and has the option to exclusively license compounds identified through the collaboration. Novartis is making an undisclosed upfront payment to CPF and funding for research at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute. In addition, CPF is eligible to receive milestone payments and single digit royalties for successfully marketed projects from the collaboration.

More than 30% of all human cancers, including 95% of pancreatic cancers and 45% of colorectal cancers, are driven by mutations of the RAS family of genes. However, over the past 30 years, it has not proved possible to find a direct pharmacological approach to target RAS that has yielded a drug. Scientists at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, supported by Cancer Research UK, have been pursuing a highly structure-based design approach to discover small molecules that will directly disrupt RAS activity.