Sanofi’s collaboration with Nurix is continuing to bear fruit, with the French pharma securing its second protein degrader program from the biotech in a matter of months.
This time, Sanofi is making a $15 million upfront payment for the rights to NX-3911, a signal transducer and activator of transcription 6 (STAT6) degrader that could potentially treat inflammation in allergic conditions. Over time, Nurix could be eligible for up to $465 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestones as well as potential future royalties. The biotech will also retain an option to co-develop and co-promote the drug in the U.S.
“Using our DEL-AI platform, we identified novel DEL-derived chemical matter from which we developed, together with Sanofi, a potential best-in-class STAT6 degrader, NX-3911, which achieves rapid and complete STAT6 degradation,” Nurix Chief Scientific Officer Gwenn Hansen, Ph.D., explained in a June 2 release.
“NX-3911 is a potent, selective, orally administered degrader of STAT6 that shows robust efficacy in multiple preclinical models of atopic dermatitis and asthma, demonstrating anti-inflammatory efficacy in animal models equivalent to a STAT6 gene knockout,” Hansen added.
Sanofi paid $55 million to partner with the biotech in 2019 and handed over a further $22 million to expand the collaboration one year later. Sanofi extended the deal again last year to cover another STAT6 degrader, and, two months ago, the French pharma paid out $15 million for the rights to a once-undruggable transcription factor.
The various buy-ins from Sanofi mean Nurix has already done well out of the partnership—pocketing $127 million in proceeds to date.
Nurix has built an internal pipeline on a platform for identifying agents that use E3 ligases to drive the degradation of targets. Like other developers of protein degraders, Nurix pitches its technology as a way to go after targets that have been considered undruggable, for example, because they lack viable binding sites.
“This is the second license extension of a Nurix autoimmune disease program by Sanofi in the last 90 days, highlighting the power of our proprietary DEL-AI drug discovery platform to fuel the discovery of novel medicines to a range of therapeutically important targets like STAT6,” Nurix’s CEO Arthur Sands, M.D., Ph.D., said in this morning’s release.
“Notably, our STAT6 program also includes additional differentiated discovery-stage assets, which could represent an additional product opportunity within our Sanofi collaboration,” Sands added.
Partnerships have helped Nurix build a cash cushion that stood at more than $600 million at the end of November 2024. The biotech is using the money to advance a pipeline led by NX-5948, a BTK degrader that is on course to enter trials this year to support approval in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
STAT6 is a key nodal transcription factor that selectively mediates downstream IL-4 and IL-13 signaling, which drives type 2 inflammatory diseases like asthma, atopic dermatitis and allergies.
Sanofi’s interest in the target isn’t limited to Nurix. Back in 2023, the Paris-based pharma paid $125 million upfront to Recludix Pharma in a pact centered around a preclinical STAT6 inhibitor.