Roche collaborates with Discuva to combat life-threatening infections

Swiss pharma major Roche (ROG: SIX) and privately-held UK biotech firm Discuva 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.

Financial terms of accord

Under the terms of the agreement, Discuva will receive an upfront payment of $16 million, research fees and payments on multiple programs of up to $175 million per product, on 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.