Key Takeaways:
- Roche partnered with Dualitas in the Roche-Dualitas bispecific antibody deal, worth $1 billion, to discover bispecific antibodies.
- Dualitas receives $36.5 million upfront to screen 300,000 target combinations using proprietary tech.
- The deal expands Roche’s bispecific pipeline into immunology and inflammation beyond existing cancer treatments.
Roche is partnering with Dualitas Therapeutics to screen more than 300,000 bispecific antibody combinations for immune and inflammatory diseases, under a deal worth up to $1 billion.
Roche Targets New Immune And Inflammatory Treatments
Roche will pay Dualitas $36.5 million upfront under the Roche-Dualitas bispecific antibody deal, a research collaboration and license agreement announced Sept. 17. Dualitas also can receive research, development, and commercial milestone payments, along with tiered royalties, bringing the potential deal value to $1 billion.
The partnership focuses on immunology and inflammation, areas where Roche is expanding its use of bispecific antibodies beyond cancer. The companies will search for antibody pairs that may produce effects that individual antibodies or conventional combinations cannot achieve.
Dualitas will use its DualScreen discovery engine to conduct the screening. The technology examines cell-surface targets at large scale rather than starting with a limited set of known target pairs.
“Bispecific antibodies remain central to Roche’s portfolio strategy across many disease areas,” said Boris L. Zaïtra, Roche’s head of corporate business development.
Zaïtra said Roche plans to continue advancing research in immunology and inflammation through outside partnerships.
Dualitas Will Screen Hundreds Of Thousands Of Combinations
Dualitas will lead the discovery work and identify potential bispecific candidates under the Roche-Dualitas bispecific antibody deal from the large screening effort. Roche will take responsibility for later preclinical development, regulatory work, manufacturing and commercialization.
Forbes Huang, Dualitas’ co-founder and chief operating officer, described the collaboration as a large-scale effort to develop new proximity-based bispecific antibodies.
The company said the screening program is among the largest bispecific discovery efforts of its kind. Its approach seeks combinations that bring two biological targets into close proximity to create a therapeutic effect.
The agreement gives Dualitas additional funding as it advances its own drug pipeline. The company launched in 2025 with $65 million in Series A financing and is developing bispecific therapies for immune and inflammatory conditions.
Roche Expands Its Bispecific Drug Strategy
Roche already has bispecific medicines in areas including cancer, hemophilia A and eye disease. The Roche-Dualitas bispecific antibody deal builds on its marketed bispecific products, which include Columvi, Hemlibra, Lunsumio and Vabysmo.
The Dualitas collaboration extends the company’s search for bispecific applications into immunology and inflammation. Roche has also pursued bispecific research in diseases such as ulcerative colitis and lupus.
Karim Dabbagh, Dualitas’ CEO, said the Roche collaboration will extend the company’s work while it continues developing its internal pipeline.
Dualitas’ pipeline includes DTX-102 for rheumatoid arthritis, DTX-103 for allergic disease and DTX-101 for autoimmune diseases affecting the skin and gastrointestinal system.
The Roche-Dualitas bispecific antibody deal does not yet represent a new approved medicine. The candidates must still emerge from discovery and undergo preclinical development, regulatory review, and clinical testing before any potential treatment could reach patients.
