Synthekine Announces Strategic Collaboration with Sanofi to Develop Selective IL-10 Agonists for Treatment of Inflammatory Diseases

Synthekine to receive $40 million upfront payment and eligible to receive milestones, in addition to tiered royalties on net sales

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Synthekine Inc., an engineered cytokine therapeutics company, today announced a worldwide collaboration with Sanofi (EURONEXT: SAN and NASDAQ: SNY) to develop and commercialize IL-10 receptor agonists for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. The collaboration will focus on advancing Synthekine’s multiple approaches to optimizing IL-10, with the goal of developing selective agonists that expand therapeutic index.

“We look forward to working with Synthekine, a leader in targeted cytokine engineering with outstanding technologies and scientific team,” said John Bertin, Global Head of Inflammation and Immunology Research at Sanofi. “IL-10 plays a key role in immune regulation, and this collaboration aimed at developing precisely tailored IL-10 therapies reaffirms our commitment to deliver the next wave of novel therapies to treat inflammatory diseases.”

“We are excited to partner with Sanofi, both a global biopharmaceutical leader and a leader in immunology, on IL-10, a high-value target with tremendous potential to regulate and suppress inflammatory immune responses,” said Debanjan Ray, Chief Executive Officer of Synthekine. “This strategic collaboration will advance our broad efforts on IL-10 to capture the full therapeutic potential of this important target and leverages both our cytokine partial agonist platform and our surrogate cytokine agonist platform.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Synthekine and Sanofi will collaborate on research activities up to a defined point of preclinical development. Sanofi will assume sole responsibility for subsequent preclinical, clinical, and commercial activities for the IL-10 therapeutics. Synthekine will receive a $40 million upfront payment from Sanofi and will be eligible for additional payments including potential preclinical, development, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as tiered royalties on net sales.

IL-10 is an important immune-regulatory cytokine that attracted substantial clinical interest in the past for use as an immunosuppressive agent. Alongside promising efficacy, however, clinical studies of recombinant human IL-10 showed dose-limiting toxicity, due in part to IL-10’s pleiotropic activity on various immune cells. Synthekine is harnessing the immunosuppressive activity of IL-10 while engineering out its immunostimulatory effects, and thus decoupling efficacy and toxicity. Learn more about Synthekine’s cytokine partial agonist platform and surrogate cytokine agonist platform here.

About Synthekine

Synthekine is harnessing the potential of cytokine therapeutics to develop selective immunotherapies designed to improve the treatment paradigm of cancer and inflammatory disease. Using insights on cytokine structure and function, the company engineers therapeutics designed to unlock the full efficacy potential of cytokines while avoiding their associated toxicities. Synthekine is applying principles of cytokine partial agonism and immunological specificity across multiple protein engineering platforms to create a broad and deep pipeline of product candidates. These novel immunotherapies include modified cytokines, cytokine-enhanced cell therapies and surrogate cytokine agonists. For more information, visit www.synthekine.com, and follow us on Twitter @synthekine and LinkedIn.