Roche offers $15bn for strategic-level deal with Hansoh

A year after signing a first deal with Hansoh worth up to $1.45 billion, Roche has returned for another that could be more than 10 times larger.

The latest – which includes an upfront fee of $400 million and potentially more than $15 billion in future milestone payments – covers multiple antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for cancer, including two that are already in preclinical development at the Chinese biotech.

It comes almost exactly a year after Roche paid Hansoh $80 million for rights to HS-20110, a B7-H3/CDH17-targeting ADC with potential as a treatment for colorectal cancer and other solid tumours – with up to $1.37 billion in future payments. Both deals give the Swiss group rights outside China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

The scale of the new alliance is further evidence of the rapid emergence of China on the global biopharma stage – the country now accounts for accounts for around a third of all biopharma pipeline projects worldwide, by some analyses – and marks Roche's seventh with a Chinese company this year alone.

Along with Hansoh's two early-stage programmes, Roche is putting its faith in the Chinese company's ADC discovery engine by using it to provide drug candidates on targets it will propose. Hansoh will take all the projections thought to the phase 1 human testing stage, with Roche assuming responsibility for any further development.

The Swiss group's head of corporate business development, Boris Zaïtra, said the strategic collaboration is central to its plans to build in ADCs, a category in which it already markets two products – HER2-directed Kadcyla (trastuzumab emtansine) for breast cancer and CD79b-targeting Polivy (polatuzumab vedotin) for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

"Exploring next-generation ADCs is one of the most compelling frontiers in oncology today, offering the potential to address critical unmet need and accelerate potential therapies for patients worldwide," he added.

Roche's other partnerships with Chinese biotechs this year include a $1.16 billion agreement with Rona Therapeutics for an ALK7-directed RNAi drug for obesity and a molecular degrader alliance with Defand Therapeutics worth up to $1 billion.

Hansoh, meanwhile, has previously licensed two ADC candidates for cancer to GSK in two agreements – worth $1.7 billion and $1.5 billion – signed in 2023. Results with one of those drugs, B7-H3-targeted risvutatug rezetecan in small cell lung cancer, will be reported at the upcoming ESMO cancer congress.