Science in the Triangle

A biotech startup in Research Triangle Park signed a deal with pharma giant Roche that could turn the company into a brain trust of cutting-edge technologies.

Dani Bolognesi

The deal allows b3bio, a two-year-old company with 10 employees, to be Roche’s eyes and ears for new drug development and delivery technologies that are in the works at universities. Technologies that suit both partners could then be nurtured at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, where b3bio has its labs, before they are turned over to Roche for further development, said Dani Bolognesi, co-founder and chief executive of b3bio.

Bolognesi declined to talk about financial details of the deal. But as the incubator of new technologies, b3bio stands to gain from successful projects, particularly if Roche decides to buy the rights to a technology, he said. Other large drugmakers could follow Roche and become partners. Also, b3bio might add a technology it incubates to its own drug development efforts.

“The diversification is a real opportunity for us,” Bolognesi said. “I’m happy [Roche] picked us.”

Bolognesi has worked with Roche before. In fact, the deal is the latest collaboration in a relationship that goes back a decade.

In 1999, Roche teamed up with Trimeris, then a Durham biotech company developing a novel HIV/AIDS drug. Bolognesi, a pioneer AIDS researcher at Duke University, headed Trimeris. Fuzeon came to market in 2003 and Roche still makes and sells the drug. But the drugmaker ended its research collaborations with Trimeris in 2007, a few months after investors ousted Bolognesi in a radical restructuring.

In 2008, Roche again collaborated with Bolognesi. This time to get a shot at a technology b3bio was working on. The technology was developed at Duke and the University of Texas and Bolognesi and Robert Bonczek, Trimeris’ former chief financial officer, set up b3bio to see whether it could be used to develop a new class of therapies for cancer, inflammation and infection.

The second deal with Roche, which b3bio announced Thursday, also builds on Bolognesi’s network of university contacts and his and Bonczek’s experience to take a novel medicine from bench to bedside. But it goes way beyond the previous collaborations. Essentially, Roche is looking to b3bio to take over part of its research and development efforts.

“It’s broad, not an extension of what we [already] do,” Bolognesi said.

In that, Roche is not alone. Large drugmakers, including GlaxoSmithKline, which has its U.S. headquarters in RTP, are relying more and more on discoveries they license from other companies. With the b3bio deal, Roche has now established a direct pipeline to an outside incubator.

A lot of large drugmakers are scaling back their own discovery efforts, Bolognesi said. “The ability to source them is a way a lot of companies are thinking right now.”