Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
A collaboration that quietly ended: BMS inherited Anokion/Kanyos's antigen-specific tolerance platform for MS, type 1 diabetes and celiac disease with milestones up to ~$1.3B, but BMS and the company mutually terminated the Option Support Agreement, closing out in 2022.
Outcome grade pending — assessed 5 years post-close.
Full analysis, sources & comparables →The original Celgene-Anokion alliance ($45M upfront, up to $10M preclinical milestones, equity stake, acquisition option) targeted antigen-specific tolerance…
After four years of preclinical work, Anokion is bringing one of the more promising celiac candidates (KAN-101) toward the clinic with $40M Series B and an…
We are excited to expand our relationship with Bristol Myers Squibb, which underscores the substantial therapeutic opportunity we believe our programs hold for…
Source summaries from our enrichment pipeline; follow links for originals.
All 8 sources with sentiment breakdown →
BMS and Anokion/Kanyos established a strategic collaboration on antigen-specific tolerance therapeutics for autoimmune diseases including MS, type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. BMS made an upfront equity investment plus committed to option exercise payments and milestones up to ~$1.3B.
Celiac disease is an autoimmune enteropathy triggered by dietary gluten in genetically susceptible (HLA-DQ2/DQ8+) individuals. The only standard-of-care intervention is lifelong strict gluten-free diet; there is no approved drug therapy, leaving substantial unmet need for accidental exposure protection or true tolerance induction.
Celiac disease had no approved pharmacotherapy at the time of the BMS-Anokion-Kanyos deal, with patients limited to gluten-free diet and emergency management of inadvertent exposure reactions. The competing pipeline included ImmunogenX's latiglutenase, Innovate Biopharmaceuticals' larazotide acetate (later failed Phase 3), and 9 Meters Biopharma's NM-002. Anokion's KAN-101, the lead Kanyos asset acquired into Anokion in September 2019, used hepatic-targeted gliadin peptides to induce antigen-specific tolerance — a mechanistically novel approach validated in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The BMS partnership covered MS, T1D, and celiac, with the September 2020 expansion explicitly adding KAN-101 in celiac. KAN-101 entered Phase 1/2 trials in 2021.
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune demyelinating disease in which the immune system attacks myelin sheaths in the central nervous system, producing relapsing or progressive neurological disability. Despite many disease-modifying therapies, the field still lacks an antigen-specific approach that addresses the autoimmune root cause without broad immunosuppression.
The MS DMT market in 2019 was a crowded field of broadly immunomodulating therapies: Roche's Ocrevus (ocrelizumab, anti-CD20), Biogen's Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate) and Tysabri (natalizumab), Novartis's Gilenya (fingolimod) and newly approved Mayzent (siponimod), Sanofi's Aubagio and Lemtrada, and the rapidly emerging S1P modulators and BTK inhibitors. All carry meaningful infection, malignancy, or PML risks tied to non-specific immune suppression. Anokion's antigen-specific tolerance platform — engineering myelin-derived peptides to traffic to liver hepatocytes via glycophorin A or hepatic targeting and induce tolerogenic deletion of autoreactive T cells — represented a fundamentally different strategy aiming to switch off the autoimmune attack without broad immunosuppression. The original 2017 Celgene-Anokion deal ($45M upfront + $10M preclinical milestone + equity + acquisition option) survived the BMS-Celgene merger; in October 2019 BMS expanded and reaffirmed the relationship across MS, T1D, and celiac via Anokion's acquisition of Kanyos. The lead MS asset (later ANK-700) entered Phase 1 MoveS-it in 2021.
| Deal | Year | Value | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Anokion SA / Kanyos Bio Inc. (this deal) | 2019 | $1.3B | — |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Medarex Inc. | 2009 | $2.4B | 92 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Celgene Corporation | 2019 | $74.0B | 77 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / MyoKardia Inc. | 2020 | $13.1B | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Karuna Therapeutics | 2023 | $14.0B | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. | 2011 | — | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / SystImmune Inc. | 2023 | $8.4B | 71 |
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