Investment of the week: Warp Drive Bio forms a collaboration with Roche

In October 2017 was announced that Warp Drive Bio, a drug discovery company developing therapeutics that exploit the molecules and mechanisms of "nature", has formed a strategic collaboration with Roche to discover and develop multiple novel classes of antibiotics. Warp Drive Bio has developed a technology called Small Molecule-Assisted Receptor Targeting (SMART), which enables small molecules to target human disease-causing proteins previously considered to be intractable to more traditional pharmaceutical modalities (see Warp Drive Bio’s corporate website here).

Warp Drive Bio will receive up to $87 million in upfront payment, option fees, and milestone payments for preclinical events, and up to $300 million in payments related to specific clinical, regulatory and sales milestones on products licensed to Roche (see here for a more detailed version of the announcement).