Pieris loses Servier as partner for cancer immunotherapies

Pieris Pharmaceuticals’ long-standing immuno-oncology alliance with Servier is being dissolved after a clinical trial of the lead drug in the alliance revealed a safety concern.

In a Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Pieris said that Servier will exit the agreement between the two companies – first agreed in 2017 and focusing on the development of several Anticalin-based therapeutics for cancer – before the end of the year.

The prompt for Servier's exit was a decision to stop dosing S095012 (formerly PRS-344), a 4-1BB/PD-L1 bispecific protein, in a phase 1 trial. Pieris said it intends to review the safety data from the S095012 study to understand the implications of the data, but does not intend to pursue any further development of the drug.

Servier paid Pieris $31 million to start up the alliance, which spanned five bispecific drugs and could have been worth up to $1.8 billion. The lead drug at the time of signing was PRS-332, a CD223/PD-L1 bispecific protein that also seems to have fallen by the wayside.

This time last year, Pieris also lost a partnership with AstraZeneca on respiratory drug candidate elarekibep, one of up to five Anticalin therapies covered by a deal also signed in 2017, with an upfront payment of $57.5 million and top-line value of $2.1 billion.

The decision to drop elarekibep, an inhaled IL-14 inhibitor being developed for severe asthma, was taken because of a safety issue that was observed in preclinical studies involving non-human primates. Pieris slashed its headcount by 70% in the wake of AZ’s decision and started a strategic review of the business.

Pieris’ Anticalin technology is designed to make protein drugs that have smaller molecule sizes, so are easier to deliver, and can bind to more than one target in a single molecule.

In its SEC update, Pieris noted that it had embarked on another strategic review in March that will be geared towards getting milestone payments from its other partnerships, currently with Boston Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer, which also involve 4-1BB bispecific proteins.

Pfizer is developing SGN-BB228, a CD228/4-1BB candidate it inherited as part of its takeover of Seagen, while Boston is working on BOS-342, a GPC3/4-1BB drug. Both are in phase 1 testing, and Pieris says it is in line for up to $330 million in research, development, and commercial milestones across the two programmes.

The company reported it held cash of $19 million at the end of the first quarter.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash