Zion Pharma Announces Global Agreement with Roche to Develop and Commercialize a Blood Brain Barrier Penetrant Oral HER2 Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor
9.5.2023 09:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Zion Pharma Limited, a Chinese biotechnology company focused on the development of brain-penetrable compounds, today announced that Roche has acquired the global rights to Zion’s lead program, ZN-A-1041. ZN-A-1041 is an orally administered selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting the Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2). ZN-A-1041 was designed to be blood-brain-barrier-penetrant, and has the potential to treat or prevent the onset of brain metastases in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Up to 50% of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer will develop brain metastasis during the course of the disease.
"Our agreement with Roche is the culmination of a tremendous team effort to deliver a potentially best-in-class therapy for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, particularly in the field of brain metastasis by virtue of the high blood-brain barrier permeability of this asset,” stated Zack Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Zion Pharma Limited. “Within five years, we have gone from company formation to first-in-human, to finding a partner in Roche, who has the resources and expertise to bring ZN-A-1041 to patients with few other therapeutic options,” Dr. Cheng continued.
Dr. Ding Zhou, Ph.D., CSO and Co-Founder of Zion Pharma Limited added, “We are pleased that Roche recognizes the potential of our asset for advancing the standard of care with regards to brain penetrable compounds in HER2-positive breast cancer.”
“We are excited to enter this partnership with Zion to further develop this innovative treatment option for people with HER2-positive breast cancer. This partnership builds on Roche’s legacy and expertise in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer and supports our pursuit of advancing science by combining external innovation with our in-house capabilities to address areas of high unmet patient needs,” said James Sabry, Global Head of Pharma Partnering.
After a transition period, Roche will be responsible for the further development, manufacturing, and commercialization of ZN-A-1041 globally. Zion will receive up to $70 million USD in upfront and near-term milestone payments pending achievement of certain milestone events. Zion will also be eligible for up to $610 million USD in additional payments following achievement of certain development, regulatory, and sales-based milestone events by ZN-A-1041, as well as tiered royalties on sales.
About ZN-A-1041
ZN-A-1041 is an orally administered selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting the Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2). ZN-A-1041 was designed to be blood-brain-barrier-penetrant. The ongoing Phase 1 trial is being conducted at multiple sites in the U.S. and China. Additional details will be presented at the poster sessions during the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in June 2023.
About Zion Pharma Limited
Zion Pharma is a private, clinical stage biotech company focused on the development of novel, small molecule, anti-tumoral agents. Founded in 2018, the company’s research headquarters are in Suzhou with additional research operations in Shanghai. The company is applying an innovative drug discovery approach, capitalizing on its DMPK expertise, to develop a pipeline of proprietary first-in-class/best-in-class compounds focused on therapeutic targets which drive tumor inhibition, including ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM), Kirsten RAt Sarcoma (KRAS G12D) and SMARCA2 (BRM). Additional information about Zion Pharma is available at www.zionpharma.com.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230508005468/en/
Contact information
For media and partnership inquiries:
J. Michael French
SVP, Corporate Development
michael.french@zionpharma.com
+1.703.338.1972
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
First Randomized Controlled Trial Shows Promise of a Ketogenic Diet in Psychotic Disorders8.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Published today in Schizophrenia Bulletin, a first-of-its-kind randomized controlled trial (RCT) from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), adds to growing literature on the potential benefit of a ketogenic diet for treating psychotic disorders. The study, which enrolled participants with schizophrenia-spectrum or bipolar-1 disorders, demonstrated rapid metabolic improvements with a ketogenic diet compared to diet-as-usual during an initial one-month RCT open-label phase. Furthermore, those who continued with the optional four-month single-arm ketogenic diet extension saw meaningful gains across metabolic, psychiatric, and cognitive measures. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260618626815/en/ First Randomized Controlled Trial Shows Promise of a Ketogenic Diet in Psychotic Disorders Of the 58 participants enrolled,
Teamily AI Publicly Launches Human+AI Social Platform to Make Building and Growing a Company Easy for Every Team8.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Teamily AI (https://Teamily.ai), together with its Agentic AI Infra platform TensorOpera AI (https://TensorOpera.ai), today announced the public launch of its Human+AI social platform, a product stack that has already served more than 5 million users around the world. Starting today in Palo Alto and rolling out simultaneously across dozens of countries, this first public launch opens the full stack to everyone with a single mission: to make building and growing a company easy for every person and every team. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708584390/en/ "This is the moment we open our doors to the world," said co-founders Dr. Aiden Chaoyang He and Professor Salman Avestimehr. "We want every person and every team to be able to move from idea to product, from product to market, and from market to growth and investment, with an AI-native team by their side." At its core, Teamily AI enables humans and AI agents
Leo Cancer Care Raises $65M Series D to Scale Its Integrated Upright Cancer Care Platform8.7.2026 15:30:00 EEST | Press release
Leo Cancer Care, the medical technology company working to reinvent how patients are imaged and treated by designing systems around the body’s natural upright position, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $65 million Series D financing. The round was led by Silicon Valley’s Yu Galaxy and welcomes new investors including Eventide Asset Management, alongside continued support from the company’s existing investors. Leading cancer institutions are already adopting the upright approach. Stanford Medicine delivered the world’s first compact upright proton therapy treatment on 4 June 2026. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and McLaren Health Care are among the institutions bringing the upright platform into their programmes — adoption that spans world-leading academic centers and smaller, regional community-based networks alike. The financing will scale manufacturing and accelerate commercial deployment, and continue clinical and product development across Leo Cancer Care’s integrated u
Fastly Joins DIMPACT to Collaborate on Digital Sustainability8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Fastly, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLY), a leading global edge cloud platform, today announced it has become a participant of DIMPACT, the coalition of leading organizations working to align industry changemakers and policymakers around meaningful, science-based solutions that reduce the environmental impacts of serving digital media products. As the first edge cloud platform provider to join the coalition, Fastly brings critical, real-world edge network data and infrastructure expertise and a transparent approach to emissions calculation and reporting to help major media, streaming, and publishing companies understand and optimize their digital carbon footprints. “We’re thrilled to welcome Fastly to the DIMPACT initiative. Their participation strengthens DIMPACT's ability to advance a more accurate, data-driven approach to measuring and reducing digital emissions,” said Jason Bell, Director at SLR Consulting and Executive Sponsor of DIMPACT. “Accurately calculating digital emissions requires a de
PubNub Introduces Blocks.ai: The Control Plane and Network Layer For AI Agents8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
PubNub introduces Blocks.ai today, a global network to connect and control agents across all agent frameworks, providers, and APIs. Blocks.ai lets developers reach their existing AI agents regardless of where they are hosted. Blocks Network supports all AI agent use cases without opening inbound ports, setting up tunnels, changing DNS, or modifying firewall rules. For more than a decade, PubNub has been the infrastructure and platform for real-time connectivity supporting billions of devices, now, PubNub delivers Blocks Network connecting the Internet of Agents. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708521206/en/ AI agents have become increasingly critical to businesses who want control over their models, code, and data. But once those agents are running locally or behind a firewall, making them reachable from custom frontends can require brittle infrastructure work. This is a key reason why McKinsey estimates th
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom