Simcere nabs rights to potential first-in-class cancer therapy

Nanjing drug manufacturer Simcere Pharma has partnered with G1 Therapeutics to commercialize its investigative cancer drug trilaciclib for the Chinese market.

Under the terms of the deal, Simcere will pay the North Carolina-based drug developer $14 million upfront and up to $156 million in development and commercial milestone payments in addition to royalties on trilaciclib sales in China. The company will also participate in future global trials for the drug.

Simcere has been pivoting toward a more innovative drug pipeline, and gaining the exclusive rights to G1’s trilaciclib certainly fits the bill. The neoadjuvant cancer treatment is designed to protect patients from chemotherapy-induced bone marrow damage known as myelosuppression.

There are more than three-quarters of a million new small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cases each year in China, and chemotherapy is the standard treatment, a G1 spokesman told STAT. “Our partnership with Simcere is across all indications, and we’re excited to work with them on clinical trials in other indications.”

In June, G1 filed a new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for trilaciclib for treating SCLC and plans to launch a Phase 3 trial for colorectal cancer toward the end of the year, and another trial for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer in 2021.