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Giant biotech Biogen Idec Inc. is joining with Aveo Pharmaceuticals Inc. to create oncology drugs around the latter’s ErbB3-targeted antibodies.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cambridge-based Aveo is entitled to an up-front payment from Cambridge neighbor Biogen (Nasdaq: BIIB), and is eligible to receive milestone payments based upon meeting preset development goals. The firms didn’t disclose the specific financial terms of the transaction.
Aveo will keep all North American commercialization rights and will also lead global development of the ErbB3 program. For its part, Biogen Idec will have an option exercisable at proof of concept to develop and market ErbB3 binding antibodies non-North America territories.
ErbB3 is a type 1 tyrosine kinase receptor that is widely expressed in human carcinomas. It has demonstrated over-expression connected with poor prognosis in several different tumor types, including breast, ovarian, prostate, colorectal, pancreatic, gastric and head and neck cancers. Aveo has held in-vivo studies that demonstrated that elevated ErbB3 levels can drive breast tumor growth and provide an escape mechanism to Herceptin treatment.
Aveo is a late-stage biopharmaceutical company working on the development of new, targeted cancer treatments. It has collaborated with Eli Lilly, Merck, OSI Pharmaceuticals and Schering-Plough. The company’s lead product is AV-951, a triple VEGF receptor inhibitor. It’s currently in a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with metastatic renal cell cancer and is expected to enter Phase 3 development in 2009.
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