Sourcing licensing opportunities in oncology & other therapeutic areas

Alacrita provides both in- and out-licensing support to a number of pharmaceutical and biotech organizations and companies. Below you'll find a series of case studies related to this service. 

I. Bolstering an internal pipeline with additional assets via acquisitions or in-licensing

Challenge: A leading precision oncology company developing first-in-class small molecules with a focus on targeting the DNA repair pathway wanted to bolster its internal pipeline with additional assets via acquisitions or in-licensing from Europe. To date, the company had only performed passive asset searches, but had recently taken the strategic decision to initiate active asset searching, particularly with regards to opportunities from academia. The company recognized that a significant investment of time and effort would be required to identify the best opportunities. Alacrita was engaged to conduct scouting activities, specifically focused on therapeutic assets in oncology with the following criteria:

• Small molecules;
• Discovery or preclinical stage of development;
• Mechanisms of interest: DNA damage sensing and repair, cell cycle checkpoint pathways, excision repair, genome stability, chromatin remodelling, and associated pathways; and
• Significantly differentiated from existing agents (first-in-class or best-in-class assets)

Solution:

Alacrita’s activities included:

• Regular attendance at meetings and conferences which were likely to attract new biotech companies in early preclinical or clinical stage of development;
• Scanning of new and recent literature to identify emerging opportunities;
• Searches of grants, deals, and pipeline databases;
• Outreach and networking with biotech and pharma companies, industry contacts, big pharma and licensing professionals and technology transfer offices.

We worked closely with the client’s team to identify important targets and pathways of interest and took an iterative approach to adjust our search criteria, such that they align with client’s evolving interests throughout the engagement. We tracked opportunities in a document that was updated and shared on a weekly basis. Opportunities that Alacrita identified as appropriate for the incubator were delivered on a rolling basis.

II. Scouting for in-licensing opportunities in oncology, autoimmune diseases and infection

Challenge: For a number of years, Alacrita has been engaged by a well-capitalized Swiss pharma company to scout and identify early stage in-licensing opportunities from the US and UK. Therapeutic areas of interest for our client have included oncology, autoimmune diseases and anti-infectives. Our focus has been to identify new opportunities that are not currently on their radar or easily identifiable through existing industry pipeline databases.

Solution: Alacrita has worked in close conjunction with the pharma company's internal team of business development professionals, who have benefited from utilizing our wide-reaching network to tap in to very early stage opportunities that are not widely known to the industry yet. Our approach includes an element of maintaining long-term relationships with early stage biotechs, mid-size pharma companies and university technology transfer offices to ensure we are amongst the first to be made aware of the types of early stage opportunities our client is interested in. We use various channels to do this including regular attendance at relevant scientific meetings and medical conferences, leveraging investor meetings or presentations about non-dilutive financing, searching new and recent literature, and outreach and networking with our industry contacts.

An example of an oncology deal sourced by Alacrita's experts is a small molecule cell cycle checkpoint regulator for which our client closed a deal with a biopharma company to collaborate on development of the asset.

For more information on our business development and pharmaceutical licensing services, please click here.