Belharra Therapeutics is riding the waves of Sanofi’s bid to become an “immunology powerhouse.”
The California biotech — whose name derives from a famous surf break in France’s Basque region — will get $40 million in upfront and near-term payments, and up to almost $700 million down the line across R&D and commercial milestones, the companies said Tuesday morning.
Belharra is applying its non-covalent chemoproteomics platform to find and confirm hits against immunology targets selected by Sanofi. The companies did not disclose the number or the type of targets, except for saying they’ll look at ones considered “undruggable,” according to a statement from Sanofi’s global head of I&I research John Bertin.
The deal is Belharra’s second pharma collaboration, which follows a large pact with Genentech that covers four therapeutic areas.
Jeff JonkerSanofi has been aware of the Belharra team and platform even before the company formed. Many of the company’s founders, investors, advisors and management came from Vividion Therapeutics, which Bayer bought for $1.5 billion in 2021. Sanofi was also familiar with academic founders Chris Parker and John Teijaro at Scripps Research.
“We’ve got a significantly differentiated platform in that we use non-covalent chemistry, so the kind that 99% of the drugs approved in the United States use, and [Vividion uses] a covalent screening platform,” CEO Jeff Jonker told Endpoints News.
Less than two years after the Bayer deal, Belharra emerged with a $50 million Series A in January 2023.
“We’ve been trying to figure out a way to work with them for basically our entire history,” Jonker said. “When they brought Houman [Ashrafian] as their head of R&D last fall and they recommitted and really focused in and made a big bet on immunology, that’s when it became clear that some of the things they wanted to do were a good match.”
And while cell therapies and other approaches are beginning to make a mark in immunology, Jonker said small molecules will continue playing a key role.
When “you’ve got clinically validated targets or you’ve got genetically validated targets that we haven’t succeeded on yet, if you could find a way to get access to those proteins and modulate them therapeutically, and you could do it with a small molecule, nobody’s gonna argue that you shouldn’t,” Jonker said. “That’s a really, really powerful combination.”
As an example, if drugmakers could replicate the activity of a Humira-type agent, he said, “we’d all be falling over ourselves.”
The Sanofi tie-up arrives as Belharra makes progress on its internal pipeline of three oncology programs and an immunology project, with its lead cancer drug on pace for clinical entry in 2026, Jonker said.
About half of the 52-employee team is focused on internal R&D and the other half on collaborations, Jonker said, noting another deal could come together in the “coming year” on existing assets or pairing up with another company’s technologies in neighboring areas like molecular glues, he added.