Roche expanded its drug discovery dealmaking with separate partnerships with Atavistik Bio and Earendil Labs. In the Atavistik agreement, Roche secured a backloaded $2 billion collaboration to develop allosteric cardiometabolic drugs, extending the company’s investment in precision chemistry and cardiovascular targets. Roche also signed a discovery collaboration with Earendil Labs under which Genentech will work on bispecific antibody therapeutics in oncology. The Earendil deal is described as a new Genentech partnership valued at $1.5 billion, continuing Roche’s strategy of combining internal development with externally sourced antibody formats. Taken together, the two deals show Roche using multi-modal discovery sourcing—small molecules for cardiometabolic disease and bispecific antibody formats for cancer—rather than centering all spend on a single platform. For smaller biotechs, the transactions indicate continued corporate willingness to pay milestone- and structure-heavy economics to secure early discovery output and future development rights.
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