Roche buys into Tmalin again

Having already hooked Roche as a partner for its cMet-targeting antibody-drug conjugate YL211, MediLink has now managed to offload its lead project, tambotatug pelitecan, to the Swiss company too. The latter is an anti-B7-H3 ADC, representing a highly competitive area in which GSK recently advanced its Hansoh-derived risvutatug rezetecan into phase 3, while Daiichi Sankyo/Merck & Co have struggled with ifinatamab deruxtecan, whose Ideate-Lung02 trial is on clinical hold. No specific financial details have been revealed about the tambota-P deal, beyond the claim that it could be worth up to $570m in up-front and near-term milestone payments. In comparison, the YL211 tie-up, announced two years ago, had a $50m up-front element, and was said to be worth nearly $1bn in biodollars. A notable aspect is that both molecules use MediLink’s vaunted tumour microenvironment “activable” linker-payload technology Tmalin, which also lies behind ADC assets picked up by Astellas, Zai Lab and BioNTech. Tmalin is one of several popular ADC platforms, another being a linker-payload tech developed by Lonza’s Synaffix division that lies behind assets including Innovent’s Takeda-partnered arcotatug tavatecan. A few days ago Synaffix struck a deal to develop bispecific ADCs with the private biotech Sidewinder Therapeutics.

Clinical-stage Tmalin-based ADCs*

Note: *as of Jan 2026 MediLink confirms that 13 ADCs based on Tmalin have entered clinical trials. Source: OncologyPipeline.