Lodo Therapeutics Corporation, a drug discovery and development company focused on identifying and producing unique, bioactive natural products directly from the microbial DNA sequence information contained in soil, today announced that it has formed a strategic drug discovery collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group.

Under the terms of the agreement, Genentech will utilize Lodo Therapeutics’ proprietary genome mining and biosynthetic cluster assembly platform to identify novel molecules with therapeutic potential against multiple disease-related targets of interest to Genentech. Lodo will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and is eligible to receive research, development and commercialization milestone payments up to $969 million based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones. In addition, Lodo is eligible to receive tiered-royalties on sales of certain products resulting from the collaboration.

"Lodo Therapeutics’ proprietary drug discovery platform is a powerful engine for identifying novel compounds with important therapeutic potential," said Thong Q. Le, chief executive officer at Lodo Therapeutics and Accelerator Life Science Partners. "We are incredibly excited to work with Genentech, and we look forward to demonstrating the power and utility of Lodo’s unique technology for the benefit of global human health."

Compounds derived from natural products comprise a significant proportion of the small molecule drugs used to treat cancer, infections and chronic illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes. Rather than relying on culturing known strains of bacteria, Lodo Therapeutics’ genome-based approach leverages the power of microbial evolution to identify novel, naturally occurring compounds that have therapeutic potential in the treatment of cancer and drug-resistant bacterial infections. This approach is expected to reduce the time and cost of drug discovery.

"Our ability to enter into a strategic collaboration with one of the leaders in innovating wholly new classes of drugs just two years after Lodo Therapeutics was founded reflects the potential of our proprietary platform to be a valuable resource to advance their drug discovery initiatives," said David Pompliano, Ph.D., co-founder and chief scientific officer of Lodo Therapeutics.

"We are excited to work with Genentech in their quest to discover novel, next-generation natural products derived from the microbiome of the soil using this innovative platform developed by Lodo," said Sean Brady, Ph.D., co-founder of Lodo Therapeutics and Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University.

James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president and global head of Genentech Partnering, commented, "Genentech is committed to accessing innovative technologies and we are excited to collaborate with Lodo Therapeutics to apply their Metagenomics Technology Platform to potentially discover therapeutics for difficult drug targets."

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