South San Francisco, Calif. – September 19, 2026 -- Dualitas Therapeutics has secured a research collaboration and license agreement with Roche worth up to $1 billion, including a $36.5 million upfront payment, to develop bispecific antibody therapeutics for immunology and inflammation diseases.
Dualitas will screen over 300,000 bispecific antibody combinations for Roche
Under the agreement, Dualitas will use its proprietary DualScreen Bispecific Discovery Engine to functionally screen more than 300,000 novel bispecific combinations, in what the company describes as one of the largest-scale bispecific discovery efforts undertaken. Roche will take over all subsequent preclinical development, regulatory, manufacturing and commercial activities for candidates that emerge from the collaboration.
Deal structure includes milestones and tiered royalties beyond upfront cash
Beyond the $36.5 million upfront payment, Dualitas is eligible for additional research, development and commercial milestone payments plus tiered royalties, bringing the potential total deal value to $1 billion. The collaboration draws on Dualitas' proximity biology expertise to identify bispecific antibody candidates with synergistic activities that the company says are unattainable through conventional antibody approaches.
Roche cites bispecific antibodies as central to its I&I portfolio strategy
Boris L. Zaïtra, Head of Corporate Business Development at Roche, said bispecific antibodies remain central to the company's portfolio strategy across multiple disease areas, and that Roche is committed to advancing scientific innovation in immunology and inflammation through external partnerships.
Dualitas advances its own I&I pipeline alongside the Roche partnership
Founded in 2023, Dualitas is developing an internal pipeline of proximity engager bispecific antibodies, with development candidates entering clinical trials next year for immunology and inflammation diseases. Forbes Huang, co-founder, chief operating officer and chief business officer of Dualitas, said the DualScreen engine has become the company's core technology for discovering next-generation proximity bispecific antibodies at a scale previously unachievable. Karim Dabbagh, CEO and board member of Dualitas, said the company's internal pipeline has already demonstrated amplified therapeutic effects beyond what conventional antibody therapies can achieve.
Traditional bispecific antibody discovery methods focus on pre-determined target pairs for incremental gains. Dualitas' DualScreen engine instead functionally screens entire cell surfaces, interrogating proximity biology across hundreds of thousands of unique bispecific combinations and target-epitope ranges.