AstraZeneca and Pieris Pharmaceuticals to develop new respiratory therapies

AstraZeneca has announced a new respiratory drug development alliance with Pieris Pharmaceuticals.

The aim will be to create novel inhaled drugs leveraging Pieris' Anticalin platform, which uses engineered proteins that can mimic antibodies by binding to sites either on other proteins or on small molecules. Since they are smaller than monoclonal antibodies, they can be delivered directly to the lung.

Pieris will be responsible for advancing its preclinical lead candidate PRS-060, a promising asthma therapy, into phase I clinical trials in 2017. AstraZeneca will fund all clinical development and subsequent commercialisation programmes.

Additionally, Pieris will have the option of co-development and co-commercialisation in the US from phase IIa onwards, while both parties will work together to progress four additional novel Anticalins against undisclosed targets for respiratory disease.

AstraZeneca will make upfront and near-term milestone payments to Pieris totalling $57.5 million (44.37 million pounds), with Pieris potentially receiving milestone-based fees of up to $2.1 billion.

Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca's executive vice-president for innovative medicines and biotech early development and business development, said: "Our alliance with Pieris adds an important new modality to our respiratory portfolio and builds on our scientific expertise in inhaled formulation technologies."

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