Orionis Biosciences has announced a multi-year partnership with Roche’s Genentech, focusing on the discovery and development of small-molecule monovalent glue medicines for difficult targets in oncology.

This is the second partnership between the companies and will include an upfront payment of $105m to Orionis, with the potential for further payments exceeding $2bn and tiered royalties on sales.

Orionis's Allo-Glue platform is central to this collaboration, combining chemical biology tools, tailored cellular assay systems, AI infrastructure and custom robotic automation.

This integration facilitates the generation and analysis of in-cell protein interaction events, propelling the discovery and design of molecular glues to address challenging disease targets.

The AI-driven chemistry stack of Orionis's platform integrates generative design, predictive modelling and a compound interrogation engine.

The offerings expedite the discovery process and concurrent optimisation of monovalent molecular glue modalities in terms of selectivity, potency and synthetic accessibility.

Orionis will handle the discovery and optimisation phase of the molecular glues, while Genentech will take charge of later-stage preclinical and clinical development, regulatory filings and commercialisation of the small molecules.

Orionis Biosciences is progressing the oncology programmes and cancer immunotherapy pipeline.

The company’s Allo-Glue platform allows target-centric and agnostic discovery of small molecule glues design for induced proximity applications.

The first partnership with Genentech, aimed at discovering small-molecule medicines for difficult targets in disease areas, including neurodegeneration and oncology, was announced by Orionis in September 2023.

Orionis Biosciences CEO and co-founder Niko Kley stated: “We are thrilled about this second collaboration with Genentech, which expands our collaborative efforts in applying induced proximity concepts to include molecular glue types beyond targeted protein degraders.

“The expansion of our existing strategic alliance underlines a strong alignment in vision for molecular glues, and the excellent work by both teams during the past year.”