WALTHAM, Mass.– Scipher Medicine today announced that Galapagos (Euronext & NASDAQ: GLPG) has exercised its option to in-license novel drug targets for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) discovered by Scipher’s Spectra™ platform.
In August 2020, Galapagos and Scipher Medicine agreed to jointly validate a suite of novel IBD targets discovered by Spectra, whereby Galapagos has the exclusive option to in-license certain validated preclinical targets for further development and commercialization. After extensive validation work, Galapagos is moving selected targets into the next phase of drug development, triggering a milestone payment to Scipher and making Scipher eligible to receive additional payments for the achievement of regulatory and sales milestones.
“By partnering with Scipher, we are effectively and efficiently identifying new targets to ultimately develop new therapies to address unmet needs of people with IBD,” said Richard Janssen, head of Search and Evaluation, at Galapagos.
Spectra is fueled by one of the largest patient molecular data lakes in autoimmune diseases and unique artificial intelligence network science-based algorithms. The platform identifies biologically similar patients and drug targets that are specific to those patients to improve response rates.
“Drug development in autoimmune diseases is entering an era of precision medicine similar to what we have experienced in oncology in the past decade. There is a significant unmet medical need for drugs that target a specific disease population with higher clinical response rates,” said Alif Saleh, chief executive officer, at Scipher Medicine. “Driven by our access to large patient population molecular data, partnerships like the one with Galapagos can bring new and more effective treatments to diseases with currently low drug response rates or limited treatment options.”
