News Feature | May 28, 2014

Chugai Licenses Antibody Engineering Technologies To Roche

By Cyndi Root

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Chugai Pharmaceutical announced in a press release that it has licensed its antibody engineering technologies to F. Hoffmann-La Roche. Roche intends to use the technologies for its antibody drug candidates. Chugai will also provide custom antibodies for Roche targets. Chugai has been collaborating with Roche since 2002, when Chugai became a subsidiary of Roche. Currently, Roche owns a large stake in Chugai. Roche CEO Severin Schwan said as recently as last year that Roche has no plans to increase its stake in Chugai.

Chugai and Roche Agreement

Chugai’s strategic alliance with Roche began in October 2002. Their first agreement was similar in spirit to the current deal. Roche wanted access to Chugai’s technology platform for small molecular synthetic drug research in the fields of oncology, renal, bone, and cardiovascular diseases. The current agreement calls for Chugai to lend its proprietary antibody engineering technologies to develop antibody drugs. Roche is furthered authorized to request custom antibodies from Chugai. The current license agreement is for an upfront fee paid to Chugai, along with annual usage fees, milestone payments, and royalty payments from Roche to Chugai.

Chugai’s Licensed Antibodies

The purpose of the licensing agreement is to use Chugai’s proprietary technologies to create novel antibody therapeutics. This class of agents has potential in a wide variety of diseases and conditions such as Crohn's disease, breast cancer, arthritis, transplant rejection, leukemia, asthma, and psoriasis. Chugai specifically named its proprietary antibody technologies in Roche’s license.

  • SMART-Ig (Sequential Monoclonal Antibody Recycling Technology - Immunoglobulin) is a Recycling antibody technology that enables a single antibody to bind to the antigen multiple times
  • SMART-Fc (Sequential Monoclonal Antibody Recycling Technology - Fc domain), a technology that creates a Sweeping antibody to eliminate pathogenic antigen from plasma
  • ART-Ig (Asymmetric Re-engineering Technology - Immunoglobulin) is a commercial manufacturing technology of biospecific antibodies with new modes of action
  • ART-Fc (Asymmetric Re-engineering Technology - Fc domain) is an ADCC enhanced technology applying ART-Ig, which achieves stronger binding affinity and stronger ADCC enhancement
  • TwoB-Ig (FcγRIIB selective binding technology - Immunoglobulin) is an Fc engineering technology that enhances inhibitory FcγRIIB binding
  • ACT-Ig (Antibody Charge engineering Technology - Immunoglobulin) enables antibody half-life extension

For more information on these technologies, Chugai has provided several resources.