C4 Therapeutics (C4T) and Calico have announced a five-year collaboration to discover, develop and commercialize therapies for treating diseases of aging, including cancer.

Under the terms of the agreement, the parties will leverage C4T’s expertise and capabilities in targeted protein degradation to jointly discover and advance small molecule protein degraders as therapeutic agents to remove certain disease-causing proteins. The partnership will pursue preclinical research and Calico will be responsible for subsequent clinical development and commercialization of resulting products that may emerge from the collaboration.

“We are thrilled to have Calico as partners in pioneering novel therapeutics based on targeted protein degradation,” said Andrew Phillips, president and chief scientific officer of C4 Therapeutics. “Calico’s leadership team has a long record of innovation and our combined efforts are aimed at bringing forward new options for patients affected by devastating diseases such as cancer.”

“We know from decades of translational research that it can be incredibly challenging to find effective pharmacologic inhibitors of many of the biologically well-validated targets, particularly in cancer,” said Hal Barron, president of research and development at Calico. “Through the alternative strategy of specifically targeting such proteins for degradation, we believe we have the opportunity to identify promising new therapeutics in cancer and in other diseases as well. We’re looking forward to collaborating with C4T’s scientists and applying their protein degradation technology to the discovery and development of effective new treatments.”

C4 Therapeutics is a private biotechnology company developing a new class of drugs based on Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) to address a broad range of life-threatening and life-impairing diseases. C4T’s Degronimid platform uses small molecule drugs to direct the machinery of the ubiquitin-proteasome system to selectively degrade disease-relevant proteins for therapeutic benefit. This distinctive mechanism provides new opportunities to target traditionally difficult-to-treat diseases and diseases plagued by drug resistance.

Calico (Calico Life Sciences) is an Alphabet-funded research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. Calico will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives.