ETH Zurich spin-out Covagen seals protein engineering deal with Roche

Collaboration

ETH Zurich spin-out Covagen has announced an agreement with pharmaceutical giant Roche, under which Covagen will use its protein engineering technology to isolate Fynomers – a novel class of protein-based drugs – that bind to undisclosed targets provided by Roche.

Fynomers discovered by Covagen will then be further tested and evaluated by Roche as the basis of new drugs. The financial terms of the collaboration agreement were not disclosed.

Dragan Grabulovski, CSO and co-founder of Covagen, said, “This collaboration with Roche represents a further step to establish Fynomers as new binding proteins for a variety of applications in drug discovery.”

Covagen is developing Fynomers for the treatment of inflammatory diseases and cancer The technology encompasses Covalent DNA Display technology and a novel single domain protein scaffold, recently developed at ETH Zurich.

The structure of Fynomers should allow them to reach disease targets that are not amenable to treatment with antibodies.

The agreement is an important validation for Covagen, an early stage spin-out from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Grabulovski founded the company with CEO Julian Bertschinger in 2007, backed by seed financing from the Novartis Venture Fund.