Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company PureTech Health PLC (LON:PRTC) has entered into a potentially highly-lucrative collaboration with Swiss drugs giant Roche.
The company is to receive up to US$36mln in upfront payments, research support, and early preclinical milestones from the Swiss company as the two work together to advance technology for the oral administration of Roche's anti-sense oligonucleotide platform.
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PureTech, which has a market capitalisation of around £384mln, is eligible to potentially receive more than US$1 billion in development milestones.
Oligonucleotides are short nucleic acid polymers used in research and genetic testing.
PureTech said its technology is uniquely designed to facilitate the oral administration of complex payloads such as nucleic acids, peptides, and small molecules.
The combination of PureTech's technology and Roche's platform could potentially enable the targeting of immune cells in novel ways.
“We are excited to accelerate the development of this promising technology from our internal lymphatic and immune cell trafficking programmes. The expertise and resources that Roche is bringing to the collaboration will help us to potentially address one of the biggest challenges in oligonucleotide-based therapeutic development: oral administration of nucleic acids," said Daphne Zohar, the co-founder and chief executive officer of PureTech Health.
The shares rose 11p to 147p on news of the collaboration.