Parvus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of disease-specific immunoregulatory medicines to treat autoimmune diseases without impairing normal immunity, has entered into a worldwide collaboration and license agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to develop, manufacture, and commercialize novel Navacim therapeutics for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), autoimmune liver diseases (ALD), and celiac disease (CD). Parvus will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and is eligible to receive research, development and commercialization milestone payments for each disease area within the collaboration, based on achievement of certain predetermined milestones. Parvus is also eligible to receive certain additional milestone payments in other disease areas, as well as royalties on net sales of products resulting from the collaboration.

“Our collaboration with Genentech is now the second partnership that we’ve entered into with a major biopharmaceutical company, which we believe reinforces the potential of our Navacim immunoregulatory therapeutic platform,” said Curtis Ruegg, Ph.D., President & CEO of Parvus. “Partnering with Genentech will enable Parvus to expand the Navacim pipeline to address several debilitating autoimmune diseases in gastroenterology.”

Under the terms of the Agreement, Parvus will conduct pre-clinical development and clinical development activities through Phase I. Genentech will be responsible for clinical development from Phase II and beyond, including global regulatory submissions and worldwide commercialization of products.

“Parvus’ technology represents a potentially transformative approach for treating autoimmune diseases by inducing immune tolerance without causing generalized immune suppression,” said James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head of Pharma Partnering, Roche. “In preclinical testing, Parvus’ platform has shown the ability to induce and expand disease-specific regulatory T cells, which restore immune system balance and halt the autoimmune disease process. We look forward to working with the Parvus team to hopefully bring this exciting advancement to patients.”

Navacims are a precision medicine platform designed to trigger a naturally occurring immunoregulatory mechanism of the mammalian immune system which has evolved to protect against autoimmune disease. As selected for each disease, Navacims present a singular, peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) at supra-physiological density, targeting cognate T cell receptors (TCR) on disease relevant T cells. Navacim binding causes a sustained assembly of TCR microclusters and prolonged signaling leading to disease-specific type 1 regulatory T (TR1) cell differentiation. Because Navacim activity depends on the presence of disease-causing, autoimmune T cells, their action is self-limiting. In preclinical disease models, Navacims have demonstrated broad therapeutic activity and disease reversal across a range of autoimmune disorders including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, ALD and IBD while consistently preserving immunocompetence to resist viral, microbial, and tumor challenges.

Parvus Therapeutics Inc. is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of Navacim therapeutics targeting autoimmune diseases. Navacims were discovered by Pere Santamaria, M.D., Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of Parvus, Julia McFarlane/Diabetes Canada Professor of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.