FRANCE – Nestlé has signed a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Paris-based Enterome, for an R&D project targeting food allergies and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Enterome is a biopharmaceutical company developing immunomodulatory drugs based on its bacterial Mimicry technology.
Mimicry is described as a “drug discovery platform” capable of “decoding the interaction between the gut microbiome and the immune system”, and coming up with therapies from a database of peptides and proteins.
In the partnership, the Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate will provide €40 million (US$40.7M) upfront in cash and in equity through Nestlé Health Science.
Nestle will also provide clinical and sales milestone payments for each licensed therapeutic candidate plus royalties on net sales.
The partnership aims to successfully develop and commercialize Enterome’s lead EndoMimics™ pipeline candidate EB1010.
EB1010 is a potent local inducer of IL-10 designed to provide improved therapeutic outcomes for patients with food allergies and IBD.
EB1010, which is due to enter clinical trials in 2023, was discovered using Enterome’s novel bacterial Mimicry drug discovery platform.
Through the same platform, the partners intend to also use it to identify and develop new EndoMimics™ as potential novel therapies for inflammation associated with food allergies.
The collaboration will also be useful in identifying and creating a pipeline of novel AllerMimics™, allergen immunotherapies for food allergies.
The pipeline will be developed using Enterome’s Mimicry platform with an initial focus on peanut allergens as the basis for a novel class of immunotherapies that aims to suppress allergic reactions.
Approximately 220 million people around the world live with food allergies, while seven million live with inflammatory bowel disease.
Through this collaboration, we are aiming to develop novel therapies for these two disease areas with high unmet medical needs
The funding of Nestlé will be in addition to EUR116million raised from life-science investors in Europe and the US and a further EUR100m from “pharmaceutical partnerships” that Enterome has in its pool.
For Nestlé, the deal is the latest in a string of partnerships and acquisitions related to food allergies, gut health, and the microbiome.
The string includes a US$175 million funding on Seres Therapeutics’ microbiome treatment and the US$2.1 billion takeover of peanut allergy player Aimmune Therapeutics.
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