Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Servier announced a broad collaboration in immuno-oncology (IO). Despite the impressive clinical efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors to date, a majority of patients fail to respond to approve therapies. The collaboration seeks to address this significant unmet clinical need by advancing a series of novel molecules, including multiple dual immune checkpoint blockade approaches. Under the collaboration, Pieris and Servier will initially pursue five bispecific therapeutic programs, led by Pieris' PRS-332 program, a potentially best-in-class PD-1-targeting bispecific checkpoint inhibitor. Pieris and Servier will jointly develop PRS-332 and split commercial rights geographically, with Pieris retaining all commercial rights in the United States and Servier having commercial rights in the rest of the world. The four additional committed programs have been defined, which may combine antibodies from the Servier portfolio with one or more Anticalin proteins based on Pieris' proprietary platform to generate innovative immuno-oncology bispecific drug candidates. The collaboration may be expanded by up to three additional therapeutic programs. Pieris has the option, at a predefined time point, to co-develop and retain commercial rights in the United States for up to three programs beyond PRS-332, while Servier will be responsible for development and commercialization of the 4 other programs worldwide. The financial terms of the collaboration include an upfront payment to Pieris of EUR 30 million. Pieris may also receive FTE funding for specific projects, an option fee upon potential expansion of the collaboration as well as development-dependent and commercial milestone payments for PRS-332 and each additional program. The total development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments to Pieris could reach EUR 324 million for PRS-332, and up to EUR 193 million for each of the other programs.Pieris and Servier will share preclinical and clinical development costs for each co-developed program. In addition, Pieris will be entitled to receive tiered royalties up to low double digits on the sales of commercialized products in the Servier territories. Pieris' multispecific technology allows simultaneous checkpoint inhibition on the same cell, which could have a clear advantage over monoclonal antibody cocktails against different checkpoint targets. PRS-332 is a novel PD-1-based bispecific, comprising an anti-PD-1 antibody genetically linked to an Anticalin protein targeting an undisclosed checkpoint target. Pieris has developed PRS-332, which is currently in preclinical development, with the intent to simultaneously block two immune checkpoints co-expressed on exhausted T cells to further improve on existing PD-1 therapies.