Roche Inks Second Drug Discovery Deal With Jnana Therapeutics

Roche Holdings AG RHHBY has doubled down on a partnership with Jnana Therapeutics, paying $50 million upfront to tap its drug discovery platform across cancer, immune-mediated, and neurological diseases.
The collaboration allows Jnana to conduct discovery and preclinical activities against multiple cancer, immune-mediated and neurological disease targets, whereas Roche will develop and commercialize final products.
The new agreement has a potential deal value of around $2 billion. It comes two years after Roche paid $40 million upfront with $1 billion at the back end for a program targeting immune-mediated and neurological diseases.
Their earlier partnership, signed in 2020, covered small molecule drugs directed at SLC transporters, a class of more than 450 human membrane proteins that are gatekeepers for controlling the movement of metabolites in and out of cells and organs.
Alongside the deal, Jnana is also taking the wraps off a $107 million Series C that will fuel its internal efforts — particularly the lead program, an oral treatment for the rare metabolic disease phenylketonuria (PKU) currently in Phase 1.
Jnana said that the funding would allow it to take JNT-517 through proof-of-concept testing in PKU, a genetic disorder caused by an inability to break down the amino acid phenylalanine in the diet.
Price Action: RHHBY shares are up 0.65% at $41.54 on the last check Tuesday.