Category: News
Madison, WI, USA, Oct. 5, 2020 — Nimble Therapeutics Inc. today announced the company has entered into a strategic collaboration with Incyte (NASDAQ: INCY) to discover first-in-class peptide therapies across various disease areas.
“This is an important collaboration for both companies to discover novel peptide based therapeutics,” said Jigar Patel, Ph.D., CEO of Nimble Therapeutics. “We are excited to partner with Incyte, an organization with world-class drug discovery, development and commercialization capabilities, to ensure maximal patient impact across multiple disease indications.”
The collaboration will leverage Nimble’s proprietary peptide synthesis, screening and optimization platform, coupled with its high chemical diversity and integrated suite of assays to enable faster discovery and optimization of promising compounds for intracellular and extracellular targets.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nimble will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, reimbursement of certain research program costs and may become eligible for downstream milestone payments and royalties. Incyte has exclusive rights to develop and commercialize any peptides discovered under the collaboration, and an option to further expand the collaboration to include additional targets.
A new drug discovery and development company is taking root in Madison, and it will prevent more than a dozen skilled scientists here from losing their jobs.
Nimble Therapeutics formed in April, spun out of Roche Sequencing Solutions, originally NimbleGen Systems, which is slated to close by June 2020.
For the past five years, Jigar Patel and a group of fellow Roche employees have been quietly developing drug discovery technology at the global pharma company’s outpost in Madison, WI. Now, they’re setting out on their own to see if their approach to identifying promising peptide-based therapies can have an impact on the sector.
April 30, 2019 (Madison, WI): Nimble Therapeutics has begun operating as a standalone business after spinning out from F. Hoffmann La Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) to commercialize its proprietary chemical synthesis technology for drug discovery and development. The company also completed a Series A financing led by Telegraph Hill Partners (San Francisco, CA).
Initially, Nimble Therapeutics will leverage the unparalleled speed and flexibility of its proprietary chemical synthesis platform, developed at Roche, to accelerate the discovery and optimization of macrocyclic peptidomimetics as novel therapeutics. “As a fully independent company, Nimble Therapeutics will establish strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to jointly develop unique drug candidates more efficiently across many therapeutic areas”, notes Dr. Jigar Patel, who led the development of the technology and will serve as CEO of the company.
Nimble Therapeutics has hired the former Roche team that helped develop its chemical synthesis technology for drug discovery. The company’s platform, validated over many years and with over 20+ collaborations, provides the ability to synthesize millions of unique natural and modified peptide-based molecules simultaneously. These molecules can be efficiently screened and optimized through rapid iterations to identify novel entities with the desired characteristics using the Nimble platform.
As part of its growth strategy, the company will expand its current collaborations and strategically develop new relationships in key therapeutic areas. “The Roche team saw the value in separating the business to enable it to expand its platform and work on a variety of therapeutic areas with strategic partners”, said Dr. Deval Lashkari, Senior Partner at Telegraph Hill Partners and board director at Nimble Therapeutics, “Nimble’s capabilities are truly revolutionary and we are excited to work with the company in a shared vision to grow the business into a leading drug discovery partner for the pharmaceutical industry.”