UK's Mission divests kidney drug to Dimerix for $292m
Mission Therapeutics' executive director, Dr Anker Lundemose.
Mission Therapeutics of the UK has struck a deal to out-license a drug for acute kidney injury to Australia's Dimerix, allowing it to focus its attention on a Parkinson's disease programme.
The Cambridge-based biotech has handed rights to its MTX652 drug candidate to ASX-listed Dimerix for up to $292 million in upfront, development and commercial milestones, and could also receive double-digit tiered royalties on global sales if it reaches the market.
Founded in 20211, Mission is focused on developing first-in-class treatments targeting deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs), a group of proteins thought to play a role in diseases characterised by dysfunctional mitochondria that start to become harmful to cells.
MTX652 targets USP30, a DUB that constantly removes ubiquitin from mitochondria, providing a potential brake on the clearance of impaired mitochondria (mitophagy) and had entered early-stage clinical development at Mission, which was considering developing the drug for heart failure.
Victoria-based Dimerix is developing drugs for inflammatory diseases, with a particular focus on kidney and respiratory diseases, and its lead drug candidate is DMX-200, in phase 3 for the rare kidney disorder focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS).
Its chief executive, Dr Nina Webster, said that MTX652 "represents an exciting and differentiated novel compound, and the acquisition of a phase 2-ready programme in acute kidney disease represents an important step in executing our strategy to expand our renal pipeline."
For Mission, the deal provides an injection of capital at a time when momentum has started to build behind Parkinson's disease candidate MTX325, which also targets USP30 but, unlike MTX652, is able to cross the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system.
Last October, Mission raised $13.3 million in funding from its existing investors to support a phase 1b proof-of-mechanism study in Parkinson's, after showing safety in a phase 1a healthy volunteer study, which added to a $5.2 million grant for the project from the Michael J Fox Foundation and Parkinson's UK.
The company also thinks that drugs that encourage mitophagy could provide new therapies for other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Commenting on the Dimerix deal, Mission's executive director, Dr Anker Lundemose, said: "This transaction provides an expedited path to patients for MTX652. It also strengthens Mission's financial position, which will enable us to accelerate development of our lead CNS-focused asset MTX325."
