BIND Therapeutics and Pfizer have extended their two-year-old collaboration to develop and commercialize a new class of highly selective targeted and programmable therapeutics called Accurins™ to optimize the therapeutic potential of two oncology drugs in Pfizer’s pipeline.
The up-to-$210 million collaboration was launched in April 2013, with an unspecified preclinical development milestone achieved for the first program in December, BIND said yesterday in announcing the extension.
As a result, BIND collected a $1 million milestone payment from Pfizer in February. That milestone payment is part of a total $89.5 million BIND could receive in payments tied to development and regulatory events under the Pfizer partnership, BIND said in its Form 10-K annual report filed March 11 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
BIND also stands to gain up to $110 million tied to commercial milestones, plus royalties in the low-single to high-single digit percentages on potential future sales of each Accurin commercialized, if any. BIND received a $4 million upfront payment from Pfizer when the deal was launched.
“We have made a great deal of progress in this collaboration and have shown promising preclinical results with Accurins containing each of the two compounds,” Andrew Hirsch, BIND’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
Pfizer still has until September of this year to exercise its option to acquire the exclusive license for the first Accurin program. The companies agreed to extend the timeline for the second program through March 2016—in order to complete preclinical research, BIND said.
“We mutually agreed to extend the research terms for the second of the two selected compounds in order to ensure it is fully evaluated and well-positioned to enter IND-enabling studies,” Hirsch added.
BIND is using its Medicinal Nanoengineering® platform to develop a pipeline of Accurins targeting hematological and solid tumors. Accurins are designed to inhibit polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) and kinesin spindle protein (KSP), both of which BIND deems promising anti-mitotic targets that have been limited in the clinic due to myelotoxicity prior to reaching therapeutic doses.
Under their original agreement, BIND and Pfizer will work together on preclinical research, with Pfizer holding the exclusive option to pursue development and commercialization of the Accurins it selects.
Pfizer is one of five biopharma giants with which BIND has inked collaborations to develop Accurins based on their therapeutic payloads and targeting ligands. The other four are Amgen, AstraZeneca, Merck & Co., and Roche.
BIND has two wholly-owned Accurins in clinical phases. One is lead drug candidate BIND-014, a prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted Accurin containing docetaxel and being developed for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with KRAS mutations or squamous histology. The company plans to initiate clinical trials with BIND-014 in cervical, bladder, head and neck, and cholangio cancers later this year.
The other Accurin BIND-510, a PSMA-targeted Accurin drug candidate designed to concentrate high levels of the potent microtubule inhibitor vincristine in tumors while limiting exposure to healthy tissue. BIND-510 is being advanced through pre-clinical studies to position it for an IND filing in 2016.