Biogen is giving C5aR1 another go.
It’s paying $70 million upfront to Vanqua Bio for exclusive global rights to the Chicago startup’s preclinical C5aR1 antagonist dubbed
VQ-201
and up to $990 million in development, regulatory, commercial and sales milestones.
Earlier this year, Biogen dropped a
monoclonal antibody
that it got from its $1.15 billion
acquisition
of HI-Bio last year. It’s now re-exploring C5aR1 with an oral medicine that targets the inflammation-inducing protein instead of a biologic.
The deal,
disclosed
Friday morning, comes as Biogen is attempting to rewire its pipeline via deals with other drug developers. The company has
scrapped some internal R&D
, including gene therapy work, and has instead
placed an emphasis on securing partners
to bring in new medicines.
In May, Biogen disclosed a biobucks-laden deal with City Therapeutics that’s focused on developing new
RNAi therapies
. “We will be doing a lot more of the City Therapeutics-type deals,” Biogen CEO Chris Viehbacher said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
“My team and the research team have been very proactive in the last few months, really thinking about how we evolve our immunology strategy, what mechanisms [of] biology we’re interested in,” Adam Keeney, Biogen’s EVP corporate development, said in an interview.
Biogen said the C5aR1 mechanism could address a variety of immune-mediated diseases, particularly neutrophil-mediated indications, since the protein propels an inflammatory response.
But it will be a couple of years before the drugmaker gets any definitive data in humans. Biogen anticipates asking for clinical trial clearance in 2027.
Biogen first waded into the C5aR1 space with its acquisition of HI-Bio, which was developing a MorphoSys-derived monoclonal antibody known as HIB210 or izastobart. HI-Bio’s asset had gone into a healthy volunteer study in 2023, but Biogen discontinued izastobart this summer, according to its second-quarter earnings presentation.
It’s now taking another shot with Vanqua’s allosteric small-molecule antagonist. The biotech launched in 2019 with ambitions to “vanquish” neurodegenerative diseases.
“We have validated biology here, but the challenge has been how to find new chemistry that’s differentiated and takes us past some of the liabilities that we’ve seen with other molecules,” Keeney said of the C5aR1 space.
Vanqua has said its C5aR1 work has potential in treating peripheral inflammatory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. The latter two diseases are key to Biogen’s business through its Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi (with Eisai) and its multiple MS medicines.
“Vanqua has a lot of experience and expertise and a different set of molecules that are CNS-penetrant that could open up those other indications, but this deal explicitly excludes those CNS opportunities and allows us to focus on the immunology applications,” Keeney said.
In a separate interview, Vanqua CEO Jim Sullivan told
Endpoints News
that the startup still plans to advance CNS-penetrant C5aR1 molecules for neuroinflammatory disorders.
The upfront payment from Biogen may help fund IND-enabling studies in this category in 2026, according to Sullivan. The biotech
last disclosed
a $45 million extension to its Series B in July 2024. Vanqua plans to fundraise next year, the CEO added.
Vanqua is already in the clinic with another neuro drug. Earlier this month, it presented
Phase 1b data
for the Parkinson’s disease drug candidate, labeled VQ-101.