Servier and Oncodesign Announce the Selection of a Preclinical Candidate as Part of Their Collaboration Targeting New Treatments for Parkinson’s Disease

Regulatory News:

Servier and Oncodesign (Paris:ALONC) (ALONC – FR0011766229) today announced the selection of a preclinical candidate resulting from their strategic collaboration to find new treatments for Parkinson’s disease.

Initiated in March 2019, this Research and Development partnership is focused on the identification of LRRK2 kinase inhibitors derived from Oncodesign’s proprietary Nanocyclix platform and their potential to act as therapeutic agents against Parkinson’s disease, drawing on Servier and Oncodesign’s complementary expertise in the field of neurodegenerative disease and kinase inhibitors.

With the selection of this first preclinical candidate, within the initial timeframe anticipated for this program, the collaboration now targets the first regulatory toxicology studies that will be undertaken by Servier. Servier has an exclusive worldwide license option for this program, which may be exercised once IND status is granted; expected in 2022. Over the course of this partnership, Oncodesign has received €13 million in an upfront payment, milestone payments and funding of research activities associated with the project. Altogether, Servier could pay Oncodesign up to €320 million in milestone payments, plus royalties on future sales.

Furthermore, during the lead optimization phase the research teams identified other molecules that have substantial follow-up potential, thus enabling the risks inherent to this type of program to be reduced. These are similar molecules to the preclinical candidate but with a slightly different profile, which could thus represent alternative preclinical candidates if difficulties are observed in the development of the first selected molecule.

Jan Hoflack, Ph.D., Oncodesign’s Chief Scientific Officer and Head of its Biotech Business Unit, said: “Reaching this major milestone illustrates the constructive nature of the collaboration initiated with Servier in 2019. We would like to thank the teams, comprising some fifteen specialized researchers from Oncodesign’s Biotech and Service Business Units and a multidisciplinary Servier team of a similar size, who have greatly contributed to this success. The selection of this molecule within the initially-anticipated timeframe, despite the difficulties associated with the global COVID-19 pandemic, reflects a shared desire to test this new approach in humans as quickly as possible”.