Roche links with Warp Drive Bio in antibiotics deal

Roche has entered into a collaboration with Warp Drive Bio aiming to discover and develop multiple classes of antibiotics with novel structures and mechanisms of action.

Under the alliance, Warp Drive will use its proprietary Genome Mining Platform to advance multiple novel classes of antibiotics with activity against clinically important, drug-resistant, Gram-negative pathogens.

The company said it is identifying and evaluating over one hundred novel classes of potential antibiotics that were previously undiscovered and thus never analysed for their impact on human health.

"We are committed to bringing urgently needed novel antibiotic medicines to patients, and we are delighted to be collaborating with Roche in that goal," said Laurence Reid, Warp Drive Bio’s chief executive.

"Antimicrobial resistance is an extraordinary threat to global human health, and Warp Drive’s unique platform allows us to access a vast reservoir of uncharacterised natural products from which to identify novel antibiotics."

The deal gives Roche an option for an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialise certain antibiotic classes that emerge from the collaboration, while Warp Drive will retain worldwide rights to all other novel antibiotic classes.

Warp Drive will receive up to $87 million in upfront payment, option fees, and milestone payments for preclinical events, and up to $300 million in payments related to specific clinical, regulatory and sales milestones on products licensed to Roche. In addition, the firm also stands to receive tiered royalties for products licensed to Roche.