Roche escalated its degrader strategy with a new collaboration with C4 Therapeutics focused on degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs), combining C4’s targeted protein degradation payloads with Roche’s antibody-drug conjugate delivery expertise. Roche will pay $20 million upfront and may contribute more than $1 billion across discovery, regulatory, and commercial milestones. The pact aims to generate DAC candidates against two undisclosed oncology targets, with an option to add a third target. C4 will design the degrader payloads using its Torpedo platform, while Roche will select and engineer antibodies; the partners plan to advance candidates through preclinical studies and onward. Roche is positioning DACs as a way to address modality limitations seen in traditional ADCs, including toxicity and resistance patterns driven by cytotoxic payloads. The deal adds to a growing set of Big Pharma efforts to diversify pipelines using protein-degradation mechanisms.