Roche and Aileron Therapeutics expand partnership

Roche and Aileron Therapeutics are to expand their ongoing stapled peptide drug development collaboration to encompass an additional programme.

The partnership, which was valued at $1.1 billion (699.21 million pounds) when it was launched in August 2010, is being extended to cover a third project, focusing on inflammatory diseases.

Until this point, the collaboration covered two programmes in the oncology area, with the ultimate goal of undertaking five projects of strategic importance to Roche.

This coincides with news that Aileron has achieved a key milestone related to in vivo proof of concept research, which has triggered a substantial milestone payment from Roche.

Jean-Jacques Garaud, global head of Roche's pharmaceutical research and early development division, said: "We now want to expand our work with Aileron and broaden the impact of stapled peptides in our portfolio to create drugs for disease targets that are intractable using currently available modalities."

Last month, Roche announced that it will be acquiring Anadys Pharmaceuticals, a specialist developer of hepatitis C.