MD Anderson wants to 'be part of the game,' partners with Radiopharm Theranostics for radioligand joint venture

2022-09-15

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has linked arms with Australian biotech Radiopharm Theranostics to build a joint venture dubbed Radiopharm Ventures. The newly formed initiative will take four candidates from two MD Anderson scientists — David Piwnica-Worms and Samir Hanash — and push them through preclinical and Phase I studies over the course of the next three years. One of those candidates, a radioligand targeting the tumor antigen CD276, has already gone through preclinical studies, and the venture hopes to get it into its first clinical trial late next year, Radiopharm Theranostics CEO Riccardo Canevari told Endpoints News . The other three targets remain undisclosed, but the venture is looking for candidates that go after “an area where other radiopharmaceuticals products are not currently in development,” Canevari said. But preclinical work here is just beginning, and Canevari said it would be another two to three years before said candidates make it to the clinic. The expansion of Radiopharm Theranostics has been quick. In August 2021, the Australian biotech launched with $20 million AUD (about $13.5 million USD) and a portfolio of four radiopharmaceutical candidates licensed from various academic labs, three of which were in early-stage clinical studies. Soon after, Canevari, a Novartis vet that led the commercialization of Lutathera, joined as CEO. Then, in November, after raising another $50 million AUD, the biotech went public on the Australian stock exchange at $0.60 AUD, though in tune with the lukewarm market , its value has been cut in half since. Enter MD Anderson. In March of this year, Radiopharm and MD Anderson began talking as the biotech was looking to potentially in-license additional candidates, Canevari said. But the Texas cancer center had something different in mind. Instead of out-licensing, MD Anderson wanted to “be part of the game,” Canevari said. And it was already in discussions with a number of companies, searching for an industry partner to start a joint venture. “So we prepared our pitch, we discussed, and at the end we were positively surprised — being probably the smaller player — that we had been selected as a partner for this joint venture,” Canevari said. Much has been fermenting in the radioligand space as of late. Novartis is the frontrunner here, with two targeted radiotherapies in Lutathera and Pluvicto already approved. It has a number of other candidates in the works, and has licensing deals with iTheranostics and Molecular Partners . Last year, Bayer acquired two small Weill Cornell spinoffs . And just last month, Aktis Oncology raised an additional $84 million while also adding Merck’s venture arm as a third Big Pharma backer, behind Novartis and Bristol Myers Squibb. Also last month, a different Australian radioligand biotech, AdvanCell, raised $18 million AUD in a round led by Morningside .

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