Revolution Medicines and Warp Drive Bio are biotechnology firms involved in the studying of molecules and mechanisms of nature to discover first or best-in-class drugs.
The deal will allow to combine both firms’ complementary drug discovery technologies and precision oncology programs focusing on frontier oncology targets.
Revolution Medicines president and CEO Mark Goldsmith said: “The merged R&D portfolio represents a rich pipeline of near- and long-term development opportunities for our R&D team to advance in support of our continuing commitment to translate frontier oncology targets on behalf of cancer patients.”
Established in 2012, Warp Drive Bio developed small molecule-assisted receptor targeting (SMART) platform, which allows mall molecules to target human disease-causing proteins previously considered to be intractable to more traditional pharmaceutical modalities.
The Smart drug modality was developed based on the molecular design and optimization of compounds to involve surfaces on disease-causing proteins, which were earlier preferred as undruggable.
Warp Drive Bio has also developed genome mining technologies to access advanced natural molecules, which were historically hidden within microbes.
The company has prepared a genomic database with more than 135,000 strains, which holds capacity to encode more than four million biosynthetic gene clusters.
Revolution Medicines uses deep biological pathway discovery and advanced chemistry, including its Revblocks modular platform, to discover and develop small and complex beyond rule of 5 molecules to overcome frontier targets that cause cancer.
The firm’s selective SHP2 inhibitor, RMC-4630, is presently in a phase 1 clinical study. It has collaborated with Sanofi on SHP2 program.
Subject to customary closing conditions, the deal is expected to complete by the end of this month.
Warp Drive Bio president and CEO Laurence Reid said: “Our board of directors is confident that integrating the two companies’ portfolios is the right path to create a strong, diversified and synergistic oncology product pipeline.
“Revolution Medicines is an excellent organization for maximizing impact for cancer patients from the merged portfolio and creating value for investors.”