Bayer arm secures exclusive worldwide rights to develop, commercialize clinical-stage WRN Inhibitor

VVD-214 was discovered and developed under an exclusive worldwide collaboration and license agreement initiated between Vividion and Roche in 2020. Vividon utilizes innovative discovery technologies to unlock difficult-to-drug targets with strong disease-links, and to develop small molecule precision therapeutics for devastating cancers and immune disorders.

Preliminary data from a first-in-human study presented at the recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting showed that VVD-214 is well tolerated and has promising signs of activity. Vividion will continue the clinical development of VVD-214 within the company’s pipeline of innovative investigational therapeutics for cancers and immune disorders.

WRN is a DNA repair enzyme and a highly sought-after synthetic lethal target for treatment of cancers with microsatellite instability (MSI). By inhibiting WRN, VVD-214 aims to cause lethal DNA damage in cancers with high microsatellite instability while minimizing harm to healthy cells.

“Bringing VVD-214, the only clinical-stage covalent inhibitor of WRN in development worldwide, into our portfolio marks an incredibly exciting moment for Vividion,” said Aleksandra Rizo, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Vividion. “We are eager to progress development of this compound, building on the encouraging clinical data we’ve seen to date, as part of our mission to transform treatment for patients with cancer and other serious diseases.”

The Phase I clinical trial (NCT06004245) is evaluating VVD-214 as a monotherapy and in combination with pembrolizumab as a treatment option for patients with solid tumors that display high MSI or deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) including but not limited to colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and gastric cancers. Treatment options for these patients today are limited, and a majority will relapse or become refractory to immune checkpoint inhibitors. The initial data, recently presented at AACR by Timothy Yap, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., clinical investigator and professor of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, showed early signals of efficacy for VVD-214 in a range of solid tumor types with high MSI. 

“VVD-214 is showing promising potential to improve treatment options for patients suffering from MSI-high cancers, a population with high unmet medical need,” said Christian Rommel, Ph.D., Global Head of Research and Development at Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division. “It underscores the ability of Vividion’s chemoproteomics technology to identify and advance new treatment opportunities for challenging and intractable diseases, and will be a valuable addition to the company’s portfolio.”

Vividion also has ongoing Phase I trials evaluating an oral KEAP1 activator in solid tumors, an oral STAT3 inhibitor in solid and hematologic malignancies, and an oral RAS-PI3Kα inhibitor in advanced solid tumors. The company is advancing multiple innovative drug discovery programs toward the clinic and has a growing pipeline of opportunities emerging in early discovery in the fields of oncology and immunology leveraging its chemoproteomics platform.