GSK enters agreement for license for JNJ-3089 for development of bepirovirsen
Betsy Goodfellow | November 2, 2023 | News story | Medical Communications | Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Infections and infestations, Janssen, hepatitis B
GSK and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals have announced that they have come to an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson company, to transfer exclusive worldwide rights to develop and comercialise JNJ-3989 to GSK.
The therapeutic was previously in-licensed by Janssen from Arrowhead in 2018.
JNJ-3989 is an “investigational hepatitis B virus-targeted small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) therapeutic”, intended to be assessed in a sequential regimen with GSK’s bepirovirsen, an investigational antisense oligonucleotide, for the treatment of adult non-cirrhotic patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) on nucleos(t)ide analogue (NA) therapy.
Bepirovirsen is currently the only single agent in phase 3 development that has demonstrated a clinically meaningful functional cure response for patients with CHB being treated with oral NAs, following positive data from the B-Clear and B-Sure clinical trials.
Chris Anzalone PhD, president and chief executive officer of Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, commented: “GSK has a global reach, a clear commitment to help those living with chronic hepatitis B and a promising strategy for clinical studies designed to improve functional cure rates. We have great confidence in the team at GSK and look forward to seeing this programme progress towards the goal of potentially helping the millions of patients with chronic hepatitis B worldwide without adequate treatment options. We would also like to thank our colleagues at Janssen for the great progress they made with JNJ-3989, the investigational siRNA therapeutic that Arrowhead discovered and initially developed.”
It is intended that JNJ-3989 will move into a phase 2 trial in 2024.
Betsy Goodfellow
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