South Korean conglomerate injects $200 million in Roivant

Roivant Sciences develops medicines by leveraging the Roivant platform to launch "Vants" – nimble and focused biopharmaceutical and health technology start-ups.

Recently, the company announced its plan to build a protein degrader pipeline based on the newly unveiled VantAI platform, a computational drug discovery platform with proprietary technologies to address the modality-specific challenges of designing and optimizing novel degrader candidates. VantAI began developing in early 2019 and has designed degraders for six unique targets to date.

The first therapeutic candidate to emerge from this platform is on track to enter the clinic in 2021. As new candidates enter the pipeline, Roivant plans to build multiple biotech start-ups from the platform.

Fresh capital and expertise to boost the VantAI platform
To support its ambitions, Roivant secured $200 million investment from SK Holdings, a strategic investment arm of SK Group in Korea focused on long-term investments in growth areas including new biopharmaceutical modalities. As part of a strategic partnership, SK Holdings has agreed to make a $200 million equity investment in the platform. 

Harnessing the body's natural protein disposal system
Targeted protein degradation is a therapeutic approach which offers the potential for improved potency and selectivity relative to conventional small-molecule inhibition by harnessing the body’s natural protein disposal system. Improved potency and selectivity can enable lower dosing and lower target occupancy to achieve efficacy and to avoid dose-limiting toxicities. In addition, degraders may be used to target proteins which are otherwise difficult to drug.

(Press release / RAN)