AstraZeneca plc and Daiichi Sankyo, its Japanese partner, will test their cancer drug Datroway alongside ivonescimab from Summit Therapeutics, the US biotech, in breast, lung and other cancers.
The first study will be a Phase III trial in previously untreated triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form lacking three receptors targeted by many treatments.
Datroway is an antibody drug conjugate (ADC), which uses an antibody to carry a toxic payload directly to cancer cells carrying a protein called TROP2.
Ivonescimab is a bispecific antibody that blocks two targets at once: PD-1, which helps tumours evade the immune system, and VEGF, which feeds tumour blood vessels.
Each company will supply its own medicine and share trial costs, while keeping development and commercial rights to its drug.
Deepening ties
The deal builds on AstraZeneca's recent agreement with Summit to combine ivonescimab with sonesitatug vedotin, another of its ADCs.
AstraZeneca has also taken an equity stake in Summit, partly to fund these combinations and future ones involving its other cancer drugs.
Ivonescimab is approved for certain lung cancer patients in China and is under US Food and Drug Administration review for lung cancer driven by EGFR gene mutations.
Datroway is already approved in more than 30 countries for some TNBC patients who cannot receive immunotherapy.
Susan Galbraith, AstraZeneca's oncology research chief, said combining immunotherapies with ADCs was central to driving "deeper, more durable responses".
Summit co-chief executive Maky Zanganeh said the deal marked an important expansion of its development programme into breast cancer.
