BioNTech sends $70M to another ADC partner to go up against Daiichi Sankyo in HER3

First, HER2. Now, HER3. That’s the plan of at­tack for BioN­Tech in its ap­par­ent bid to fol­low in the foot­steps of an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate leader Dai­ichi Sankyo.

Af­ter li­cens­ing a HER2-tar­get­ing ADC from Du­al­i­ty­Bio in April and tak­ing the treat­ment can­di­date in­to Phase III this fall, BioN­Tech is now team­ing up with an­oth­er Chi­na biotech, MediLink Ther­a­peu­tics, to go af­ter HER3.

The Ger­man biotech, flush with Covid-19 vac­cine mon­ey, will dish out $70 mil­lion up­front to Suzhou-based MediLink just weeks af­ter Dai­ichi Sankyo said it would seek the first HER3 ADC ap­proval in the next few months as it builds on its HER2 En­her­tu dom­i­nance with part­ner As­traZeneca. A BioN­Tech spokesper­son de­clined to com­ment be­yond the press re­lease.

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