Roche has signed a collaboration deal with Defand Therapeutics, a Hangzhou-based startup, to discover and develop multiple molecular glue medicines for cancer and immune-driven diseases. Under the agreement Defand will use its screening platform to identify molecular glue degraders and advance programs to agreed research stages, while Roche will take over further preclinical and clinical development and hold exclusive global commercialization rights. The financial terms were not disclosed, but a source with knowledge of the agreement told STAT it could be worth close to $1 billion between the upfront fee and payments tied to preclinical, clinical and regulatory goals. Endpoints News separately reported an upfront payment of less than $10 million, meaning most of the reported value depends on future milestones.
Molecular glues are designed to stick a disease-causing protein to the cell’s disposal machinery so it gets destroyed rather than merely blocked. The field has accelerated on the back of Revolution Medicines’ Rasonque, whose pancreatic cancer data showed survival nearly doubling versus chemotherapy. Defand, founded in 2023, says its platform can screen cytoplasmic, nuclear, transmembrane and viral proteins, and claims screening cell lines for more than 100 clinically relevant targets plus compound libraries focused on several E3 ligases.
The structure is the real signal. Rather than licensing Defand’s clinical-stage medicines, Roche is enlisting the startup to discover new ones, suggesting multinationals are moving earlier into Chinese biotech to secure discovery platforms, not just de-risked assets. The deal is Roche’s fifth biotech agreement in about four weeks, a stretch carrying more than $7 billion in combined potential value against $281.5 million in disclosed upfront payments: two September 24 research partnerships with Atavistik Bio and Earendil Labs, an ADC collaboration with DualityBio, a trispecific license from Simcere Zaiming, and a bispecific discovery deal with Dualitas Therapeutics. Roche also holds an option to expand the Defand collaboration to additional targets.