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BioMotiv, Bristol-Myers Squibb partnership yields its first startup – Crain’s Cleveland Business


A partnership formed last September by BioMotiv of Cleveland and New York-based pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE: BMY) has produced its first company.

BioMotiv, a biotechnology accelerator associated with the $340 million Harrington Project for Discovery & Development, and Bristol-Myers Squibb on Tuesday, Feb. 4, announced the launch of Anteros Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company focused on developing a new class of drugs for fibrotic and other inflammatory diseases.

The companies said in a news release that intellectual property behind Anteros was developed by Yale University and in-licensed by Bristol-Myers Squibb, and then subsequently assigned to Anteros.

Under terms of the partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb “will contribute the IP, data and reagents for a series of small molecules against an undisclosed mechanism, and BioMotiv, through the formation of Anteros Pharmaceuticals, working in close partnership with Yale, will be solely responsible for research and development,” the release stated.

The companies didn’t disclose how much money is going into Anteros.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has the option to acquire the company from BioMotiv, under pre-agreed terms, once Anteros nominates a preclinical candidate, according to the release.

Anteros is “the first of several companies” that BioMotiv and Bristol-Myers Squibb intend to form under their partnership agreement, said Satish Jindal, CEO of BioMotiv.

He said Anteros “will focus on refining a new class of drug candidates for inflammatory diseases, where currently there are no real answers to multiple diseases that afflict millions of patients.” The “broader mission” of the partnership, Jindal said, is to “translate novel discoveries into breakthrough therapies for patients in need, forming companies such as Anteros to achieve this goal.”

Fierce Biotech described the arrangement leading to the Anteros launch as “a slight twist on how BioMotiv typically founds biotechs. BioMotiv’s focus is on finding promising science in academia, creating startups to house it and helping researchers take it forward. In the case of Anteros, the science had already left academia and entered industry via Bristol-Myers’ deal with Yale. BioMotiv is involving Yale to keep the science moving forward.”

Rupert Vessey, executive vice president for research and early development at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said in a statement that partnerships such as the new one with BioMotiv “enable us to progress the transformational research being performed at leading academic institutions such as Yale and effectively translate those discoveries into new therapies for patients.”



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