MultiOmic Health and Alloy Therapeutics announced today they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly discover and develop first-in-class renal tissue-targeting drugs, combining artificial intelligence-driven precision medicine with advanced therapeutic engineering platforms.
The collaboration aims to develop targeted kidney medicines that could significantly improve both efficacy and safety compared to conventional systemic treatments. By focusing on specific patient subpopulations rather than broad disease categories, the companies expect to achieve "an order of magnitude improvement" in treatment outcomes.
London-based MultiOmic Health (MOH), an AI-enabled precision medicine discovery company, has identified certain fast-progressor patient subpopulations who respond poorly to existing kidney disease treatments. Using its computational biology platform, MOH has discovered novel drug targets specific to these patients and developed AI-enabled patient stratification models that could enable more efficient clinical trials.
Alloy Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotechnology ecosystem company, will contribute its expertise in bispecific antibody and genetic medicine platforms to engineer drugs that modulate the MOH-identified targets in specific kidney cell types.
New Venture Creation
As part of the agreement, 82VS, Alloy's venture studio, will establish a new asset-centric drug development company (tentatively codenamed "RenalDevCo") that will license the relevant intellectual property from both parent companies.
Both Alloy and MOH will receive substantial equity stakes in RenalDevCo, along with downstream development milestone payments and single-digit royalties. MultiOmic Health will also receive research services payments to deploy its disease biology, pharmacology, and medical expertise for overseeing IND-enabling studies and managing exploratory clinical trials.
"We were impressed by MOH's patient stratification and target discovery platform while reviewing the drug targets they proposed," said Mike Schmidt, Alloy Therapeutics' Chief Scientific Officer. "Their deep expertise in disease biology, pharmacology and exploratory drug development is rooted in several individuals with track records of taking assets to clinical stage and approval, complementing our own capabilities very well."
Precision Medicine for Kidney Disease
The collaboration represents a significant step forward in applying precision medicine approaches to kidney disease, an area with substantial unmet medical needs. Chronic kidney disease affects approximately 10% of the global population, with many patients progressing to end-stage renal disease despite current treatments.
By targeting specific kidney tissues in defined patient subgroups, the companies aim to address the heterogeneity of kidney disease progression that has challenged traditional drug development approaches.
Michael Sierra, MultiOmic Health's Chief Scientific Officer, highlighted Alloy's expertise in engineering therapeutics to target specific tissue types as a major attraction for the partnership. "The range of drug modalities they work with was also a big draw for us," he added.
Complementary Expertise
The collaboration brings together complementary capabilities from both organizations. MultiOmic Health specializes in deciphering complex multifactorial diseases where genetic mutations alone cannot explain rapid disease progression. Their platform combines proprietary patient datasets, computational biology analytics, and targeted laboratory experiments.
Alloy Therapeutics provides access to cutting-edge drug discovery technologies across multiple modalities, including antibodies, TCRs, genetic medicines, peptides, cell therapies, and drug delivery. The company has established a track record in the industry, with its platforms serving as the foundation for 10 clinical-stage assets so far, including two in Phase II trials.
"MOH's platform can decipher many common chronic diseases where investigating genetic mutations alone has struggled to explain the rapid deterioration of substantial numbers of patients despite standard of care treatments," said Errik Anderson, Alloy Therapeutics' CEO and Founder. "They are aiming to transform the health prospects of such patients with common diseases when many other industry researchers focus on rare and monogenic diseases. I see this strategic collaboration as potentially the first of many."
Future Implications
Robert Thong, MultiOmic Health's CEO and Co-Founder, expressed excitement about partnering with Alloy, noting their recent collaborations with pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Sanofi as evidence of their industry standing. These collaborations focus on developing an advanced antibody discovery platform and brain tissue-targeting RNA therapeutics, respectively.
The partnership represents a growing trend in the pharmaceutical industry toward more targeted, personalized approaches to treating complex diseases. By combining AI-driven patient stratification with tissue-specific drug delivery, the companies hope to overcome the limitations of conventional treatments that take a one-size-fits-all approach.
If successful, the collaboration could establish a new paradigm for treating kidney diseases and potentially extend to other chronic conditions where disease progression varies significantly among patients despite similar diagnoses.
