Press Release

QUANTRO Therapeutics extends collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim to address high unmet needs in cancer patients

• Extension of collaboration for two additional years follows successful completion of major high-throughput screening (HTS) campaign and identification of attractive hits for further development.
• The aim of the partnership is to develop first-in-class drug candidates targeting cancer-associated transcription factors.
• QUANTRO is eligible to receive success-based R&D, regulatory and commercial milestone payments up to an estimated total value of around € 500M.
• Company to attend BIO-Europe 2025 in Vienna, November 3–5.

Vienna, Austria, 14 October 2025: QUANTRO Therapeutics (QUANTRO), a technology leader in the discovery of first-in-class transcription factor targeting cancer treatments, is pleased to announce the extension of its strategic collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. Building on the progress made during the first phase, based on an agreement signed in 2022, this extension for two additional years will further advance the joint R&D program aiming to develop first-in-class drug candidates targeting cancer-associated transcription factors.

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with a high unmet need for novel and effective treatments. Despite advancements in cancer therapy, many patients still face limited options and poor outcomes. This partnership aims to address these challenges by developing innovative therapeutics that target underlying mechanisms of cancer previously considered undruggable.

“We are excited to continue the successful collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim to achieve our joint goal of transforming the lives of people living with cancer,” said Dr. Michael Bauer, CEO of QUANTRO. “The identification of functionally validated hits for difficult to drug transcription factor targets, using our HTS screening platform, confirms the precision, impact and maturity of our innovative time-resolved transcriptomics platform. We look forward to further pushing the boundaries of what is possible in transcriptomic drug discovery.”

Transcription factors are central regulators of gene expression and play a key role in the development and progression of cancer. Despite their relevance, they have remained largely inaccessible to drug development due to technical limitations and lacking precision of conventional assay techniques. These are incapable of adequately identifying direct transcriptional responses caused by drug treatments at early time-points, i.e. one hour after dosing. QUANTRO’s proprietary, time-resolved transcriptomics platform overcomes these limitations by enabling the precise characterization of transcriptional responses over time, thereby revealing actionable disease-driving mechanisms.

So far, Quantro has achieved technical proof-of-concept, cross-validation of its HTS screening technology, and the identification of functionally validated hits against previously undruggable transcription factors. This was followed by the successful completion of the company’s largest transcriptomic dual-target screening campaign to date, evaluating over 350,000 compounds to identify candidates specifically targeting selected transcription factors.

Now, QUANTRO will continue to apply its time-resolved transcriptomics platform to jointly advance the discovery of first-in-class small molecule inhibitors of selected oncogenic transcription factors.

Under the agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim, QUANTRO has already received payments and is eligible to receive further success-based R&D, regulatory and commercial milestone payments up to an estimated total value around € 500M. Further details of the collaboration terms were not disclosed.

QUANTRO retains full ownership of its technology platform and internal drug discovery programs targeting additional transcription factors beyond the scope of the collaboration.

Meet QUANTRO at BIO-Europe:

QUANTRO’s CEO Dr. Michael Bauer and Arianna Sabò, Head of R&D, will be attending BIO-Europe in Vienna from November 3–5, 2025 to engage with pharma partners and investors, showcasing the company’s latest progress with its transcriptomic drug discovery platform. Get in touch to schedule a meeting via the partnering system or through Contact | QUANTRO.

About QUANTRO:

QUANTRO Therapeutics is a transcriptomic Drug Discovery and R&D company focused on building a highly innovative pipeline of modulators, inhibitors or degraders of transcription factors, regulators of gene expression and cell signaling targets. QUANTRO’s transcriptomic discovery platform   uses a novel and proprietary time-resolved gene expression profiling technology to target gene transcription factors, so far considered un-druggable.

QUANTRO’s technology is uniquely positioned to quantify changes in gene expression over time with unprecedented precision and sensitivity, overcoming the deficiencies of traditional RT-qPCR based technologies like DRUG-seq, which are limited to only measure RNA abundance, without capturing information on transcriptional activity and dynamics.

QUANTRO was founded in 2019 as a spin-out from the prestigious research institutes IMBA and IMP in Vienna, Austria. Since 2020, the company has been supported by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) and Evotec as seed investors, complemented by undisclosed proceeds from the ongoing strategic collaboration on selected oncology targets with Boehringer Ingelheim Oncology.

Please find more information on the website at www.quantro-tx.com or LinkedIn.

Contact
QUANTRO Therapeutics GmbH
Dr. Michael Bauer, CEO
Email: Contact | QUANTRO
Phone: +43 122 66001

Media Contacts
MC Services AG
Dr. Cora Kaiser, Dr. Johanna Kobler (international and German-speaking media inquiries)
Shaun Brown (international trade press)
Phone: +49 89 210228 0
Email: quantro@mc-services.eu