Roche walks away from Hookipa’s KRAS immunotherapy

KRAS is a hot target, but Hookipa isn’t reaping the benefits from being in this arena. Today the group said Roche was ending a collaboration over HB-700, its preclinical neoantigen immunotherapy project designed to hit five KRAS mutations. Hookipa hopes to find a new partner for the project, but looks like it has bigger problems: the KRAS news came as the group announced a drive to cut costs, slashing 30% of its workforce and pausing development of its prostate cancer project HB-300 as it focuses on HB-200 for HPV16-positive head and neck cancer, and a couple of Gilead-partnered infectious disease cure programmes. Hookipa, which sank 16% during trading today, is now worth a mere $58m, well below cash levels of $117.5m as of the end of last year. Roche, meanwhile, already has its own KRAS G12C inhibitor, divarasib, which it expects to file in second-line NSCLC in 2026 or later.

Hookipa’s cancer programmes

Source: OncologyPipeline.