Shire and Santaris extend rare disease alliance
pharmafile | August 28, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Locked Nucleic Acid, Santaris, Shire, rare disease
Shire and rare disease partner Santaris have announced an extension of their partnership into orphan treatments.
The extension of the alliance, which began in 2009, will focus on Locked Nucleic Acid using the ‘naked’ or ‘gymnosis’ method that uses LNAs in their sequence in place of standard nucleic acids.
Under the terms of the extended agreement, Shire will have the right to nominate additional collaboration targets for drug discovery and development using the LNA method.
Santaris will receive an upfront payment and, consistent with the initial agreement, is eligible for research support, preclinical, clinical and sales milestones and royalties on each product emerging from the collaboration.
The original deal provided Santaris with early-stage payments of $6.5 million covering technology access, exclusivity for three pre-defined targets and initial discovery funding, and an additional early-stage payment of $13.5 million upon successful completion of certain initial studies.
In addition to the initial payments under the 2009 contract, Santaris received funding for all additional discovery activities to be performed and payments on Shire’s nomination of up to two additional targets.
It was also eligible to receive development, regulatory, and sales-related milestone payments of up to $72 million for each of the potential five drug candidates and customary royalties on the worldwide sales of commercialised products arising from the alliance.
Henrik Stage, president and chief executive at Santaris Pharma, said: “Our collaboration with Shire is very important to us so we are very pleased with the decision to extend the agreement and allow for more drug discovery and development programmes. We believe the LNA drug platform offers a unique opportunity to develop drugs against the rapidly expanding number of disease targets in the rare genetic disorder space.”
Albert Seymour, VP of discovery research at Shire, said: “We are delighted with our partnership with Santaris, whose expertise and capabilities in LNA antisense therapy complement Shire’s drug discovery and development strengths. Our hope is that the partnership will eventually translate into novel drugs that will help patients suffering from debilitating rare diseases lead better lives.”
Santaris is currently using its technology to develop LNA-based drug candidates against mRNA and microRNA targets.
This includes development for a potential range of diseases such as cardiometabolic disorders and cancer – the firm already has deals with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline for these targets.
The company’s most advanced product candidate is its hepatitis C treatment miravirsen, which is currently in mid-stage trials.
Ben Adams
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