Engitix, a biotechnology company pioneering extracellular matrix (ECM)-driven drug discovery, has announced a strategic research collaboration and option agreement with GSK to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets driving liver fibrosis regression.
This alliance brings together Engitix’s proprietary human ECM platform and deeply phenotyped multi-omics datasets with GSK’s drug development capabilities, to address a critical gap in fibrosis drug discovery by focusing on mechanisms of liver fibrosis regression, rather than progression, and enable the discovery of high-confidence, functionally validated targets grounded in human disease biology.
Under the terms of the agreement, Engitix is eligible to receive up to £44.5 million in upfront and near-term payments, as well as up to £118 million per target in downstream milestone payments, in addition to tiered low-single digit royalties on future product sales.
Engitix will develop human ECM-based disease models and generate high-resolution translational multi-omics datasets, to uncover novel targets associated with fibrosis resolution in liver disease.
GSK will have the option to licence assays, datasets, and targets arising from the collaboration and GSK will lead any further research, development and commercialisation activities on targets discovered and validated in the collaboration.
