Summit's tie-up with a difference cuts no ice with investors

While biotech investors normally shrug off clinical trial collaborations as unimportant, on the grounds that these don't represent actual licensing activity, there's something different about the one announced on Monday between Summit and Pfizer. Perhaps the key difference is that this agreement involves the junior party, Summit, providing a big pharma group with one of its projects (the high-profile anti-VEGF x PD-1 MAb ivonescimab) for the latter to put into its clinical trials. But if the aim of this announcement was to hint at a more formal future tie-up the strategy backfired: Summit crashed 12% in early trade, losing over $1b in valuation. Perhaps the markets now see Summit as beholden to Pfizer, with other deals off the table. It's far more typical for a clinical trial collaboration to see a big pharma group like Merck & Co providing a big-selling drug like Keytruda for free so a biotech can test its own project on top of a standard of care. In this case Pfizer will evaluate ivonescimab in combination with several of its vedotin ADCs; clinical studies will be overseen by both companies, but will be run by Pfizer.