On October 15, 2024, TRIANA Biomedicines announced a major announcement that it has entered into a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with world-renowned pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. At the heart of this agreement is a joint effort to develop a series of novel molecular gel degraders that will target multiple key targets in multiple disease areas, including but not limited to oncology.
Under the terms of the agreement, TRIANA Biomedicines will receive an upfront payment of $49 million from Pfizer. In addition, TRIANA is eligible to receive more than $1.5 billion in potential milestone payments in the future, as well as tiered royalties based on product sales. TRIANA will be responsible for discovering and identifying potential drug molecules in the early stages of drug development, while Pfizer has exclusive options on these drug candidates and will be responsible for the preclinical and clinical development of these drug candidates.
TRIANA Biomedicines is a leading company in the field of biotechnology focused on building a leading molecular gel discovery platform. The platform is built with an advanced AI algorithm that identifies protein surface features that may interact with proteins, and validates and tests them on existing protein-action networks. With this algorithm, TRIANA is able to predict which target proteins have greater affinity and sequence the E3 ligases that are most likely to form complexes with the target proteins.
In addition, TRIANA introduced the Five Rules of Drug screening in the selection of molecular gel, which is a method of screening for the chemical properties of oral pharmaceutical small molecule compounds. These rules include no more than five hydrogen bonds and a molecular weight of less than 500, which help improve the absorption rate of the drug in the body.
Molecular gel deactivator is a small molecule that can induce the interaction between the E3 ubiquitin ligase substrate receptor and the target protein, and is degraded by the proteasome through the ubiquitination process. Different from PROTAC technology, molecular glue degraders have dual ligand structure characteristics for E3 ubiquitin ligase and target protein, and can bind to both proteins at the same time to promote their ubiquitination, so as to achieve the degradation of non-drug-resistant targets and protein-protein interactions. Molecular rubber degraders have the characteristics of smaller molecular weight, simpler chemical structure, less space interference and better druggability, but it is relatively difficult to design. The identification of molecular gel compounds requires a wide range of rational studies, including structural biology, biochemistry, biophysics, spectroscopy, and gene mutomics.
Molecular gel degraders have shown the ability to target unproducible proteins (such as transcription factors and splicing factors), and their classification mainly includes: (1) molecular gel degraders targeting CRLs ligase; (2) Molecular gel inhibitors targeting cyclin-dependent kinases; (3) Molecular gum degraders targeting cytochrome P450 1B1; (4) Molecular gel degraders targeting transcription suppressor BCL6; (5) Molecular gel deactivators targeting epidermal growth factor receptors.
According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 240 kinds of molecular glue reducers currently in research, and most of them are concentrated in the fields of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, kerato-conjunctivitis, organ transplantation, anemia and other diseases. These research and development efforts are expected to offer new possibilities and hope for the future treatment of these diseases.