Astra bets on an EGFR future beyond Tagrisso

Already boasting the standard of care in EGFR-mutant lung cancer in the blockbuster drug Tagrisso, AstraZeneca has its eyes on the future. A deal with the private US biotech Pinetree Therapeutics could give the big pharma company rights to a degrader molecule targeting EGFR; at present this unnamed project is at the preclinical stage, but Astra has been sufficiently impressed to take out an option over a future licensing deal, worth $45m in up-front and “near-term” payments. Targeted protein degradation is a hot drug development modality, and though little is known about Pinetree’s approach the company has patented the use of neuropilin-1 (NRP1) to trigger internalisation and lysosomal degradation of proteins of interest. A search of OncologyPipeline reveals a few other EGFR degraders in development, perhaps the most notable of which is BG-60366, a Protac degrader that BeiGene says it hopes to take into phase 1 this year. Pinetree raised $23.5m in a series A round in mid-2022.

EGFR degraders in development

Source: OncololgyPipeline.