Johnson & Johnson has agreed to acquire Firefly Bio Inc., a biotechnology company advancing its Firelink degrader antibody conjugate (DAC) platform, for $1 billion in cash.

The Firelink DAC platform for KRAS-driven tumors bolsters Johnson & Johnson’s oncology pipeline and ambition to develop targeted medicines for the most prevalent and hard-to-treat solid tumors with high unmet need. The platform offers a novel, innovative approach to overcome limitations of existing treatments by delivering a highly selective protein degrader to tumor cells, while avoiding healthy cells.

“KRAS has notoriously been considered an undruggable target and patients with KRAS-driven cancers continue to face limited treatment options with survival measured in months, not years,” said John Reed, M.D., Ph.D., EVP, Innovative Medicine, Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson. “We believe the proprietary Firelink platform will overcome the limitations of current treatments and diversify our pipeline with preclinical candidates for treating multiple types of solid tumors.”

The closing of the transaction is expected to occur later this year.