Roche, Dualitas team up to find bispecific drugs for immune diseases

An article from Emerging biotech Roche, Dualitas team up to find bispecific drugs for immune diseases Through a research deal worth up to $1 billion, Dualitas will sift through more than 300,000 possible bispecific combinations in the hopes of unearthing new and differentiating treatments. Published Sept. 17, 2026 Gwendolyn Wu Senior Reporter Share Copy link Email LinkedIn X/Twitter Facebook Print License Add us on Google Roche is staking $36.5 million up front on a partnership with biotechnology startup Dualitas Therapeutics, the companies said Thursday.

Through the deal, Dualitas will screen more than 300,000 potential bispecific antibody combinations to help the Swiss pharmaceutical giant find new experimental medicines to treat immune diseases. Dualitas could receive up to $1 billion in future payouts if certain milestones are met, and is eligible for future sales royalties, too. Roche can choose a “limited number” of programs to advance; anything it skips over could be developed by Dualitas at a later date, said Forbes Huang, Dualitas’ co-founder, chief business officer and chief operating officer.

Huang claimed that the company’s screening technology is unique in its ability to sift through large quantities of potential drug combinations and compare them to approved medications and monoclonal antibodies in testing. “Our discovery engine is able to detect those novel combinations that have differentiated activity,” Huang wrote in an email. Dualitas is advancing three of its own bispecific antibodies, the furthest ahead of which is a program codenamed “DTX-102” that is being developed for rheumatoid arthritis.

DTX-102 is expected to enter the clinic in 2027, according to the company. Its other two programs could be tested in allergy, asthma, skin conditions and gastrointestinal disorders. “Each program has demonstrated preclinically the ability to elicit unique and differentiated activity that even commercial and clinical benchmarks cannot achieve, when compared head-to-head,” Huang wrote.

Dualitas launched last year with $65 million from a cadre of investors led by Qiming Venture Partners and Versant Ventures. The company’s bispecifics are different than traditional double-barreled antibodies, which lock onto targets on two different cells. Dualitas’ drugs instead use a special antibody arm called a “proximity engager” to force two proteins on the same cell close together, creating “synergistic” effects that wouldn’t otherwise occur.

Roche is no stranger to bispecifics. It sells the hemophilia A drug Hemlibra, the eye medicine Vabysmo and the cancer treatments Lunsumio and Columvi. But its deal with Dualitas adds another weapon to its arsenal of experimental dual-pronged antibodies for immune conditions, an increasingly popular area of drug research.

The alliance with Dualitas follows another investment Roche made in immune drug development; last year, its Genentech division announced a partnership with Flagship Pioneering’s Repertoire Immune Medicines to find new treatments for autoimmune conditions. Add us on Google Share Copy link Email LinkedIn X/Twitter Facebook Print License Filed Under: Pharma, Biotech