LegoChem Biosciences has announced that it has entered a research collaboration and license agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical for the development of antibody-drug conjugates in immuno-oncology.

Takeda gains certain rights to LCB’s antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) technology, ConjuAll, including LCB’s proprietary linker and conjugation platform, to research, develop and commercialize targeted immuno-oncology therapeutics. Under the terms of the agreement, Takeda has rights to use the LCB technology to develop therapeutics directed to up to three undisclosed targets.

LCB will receive $7.25 million in upfront and near-term milestone payments. In addition, LCB is eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to $404 million as well as royalties on the sales of any resulting ADC products.

Yong-Zu Kim, CEO of LCB said, "We are delighted to collaborate with Takeda given its experience and expertise in oncology research and development. We believe this partnership provides further validation of our proprietary ADC platform technology that can be used for different oncology applications including immuno-oncology therapeutics. Our goal is to demonstrate the competitiveness of LCB in the global ADC market by applying our linker and payload platform technologies to our own and our collaborators’ pipelines."

ConjuAll™ is ADC platform technology utilizing novel linker chemistry combined with site-specific enzymatic conjugation.