Roche Signs Peptide Pact With Aileron …

Roche and Cambridge, Mass.-based Aileron Therapeutics will jointly develop a new class of stapled-peptide drugs against five Roche disease targets. Roche will pay Aileron at least $25 million in technology access fees and R&D support. Aileron could also receive up to $1.1 billion in milestone payments. Aileron uses a stabilization technology to lock peptides into biologically active shapes that have both small-molecule-drug-like properties and high binding affinity for target proteins. Such peptides are considered a means of addressing difficult disease targets, including intracellular protein-protein interactions.