Isis Pharma Nabs $65 Million Upfront in Antisense Deal With AstraZeneca PLC

August 3, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

CARLSBAD, Calif. – Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and AstraZeneca PLC inked a deal to develop antisense therapies for cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases, the companies jointly announced this morning. This marks a continued trend for Isis to collaborate with a large pharmaceutical company to develop antisense therapies.

As part of the deal, London-based AstraZeneca will pay Isis $65 million in upfront monies, plus milestone payments from any drug from the collaboration AstraZeneca is able to advance through clinical development. California-based Isis will be eligible to earn tiered double-digit royalties on annual net sales for each program, the company said in a statement.

B. Lynne Parshall, Isis’ chief operating officer, said the new collaboration with AstraZeneca will help broaden the application of the company’s antisense technology to targets in the kidney.

“This new collaboration with AstraZeneca is committed to finding novel best-in-class therapies for some of the largest, most complex and fastest growing disease segments in the developed world,” Parshall said in a statement.

Isis’ stock was up slightly in pre-market trading following the news of the collaboration with AstraZeneca. The stock closed Friday at $54.93 per share. AstraZeneca’s stock is up slightly in early morning trading, opening at $33.85 per share.

Mene Pangalos, vice president of innovative medicines and early development at AstraZeneca, said in a statement that antisense-based therapies have become an important part of the company’s early stage pipeline.

Pangalos said the combination of Isis’ antisense drug research and AstraZeneca’s “expertise in cardiovascular, metabolic and renal disease drug discovery and development” will drive the development of clinical research.

Antisense drugs are short, chemically modified, single-stranded nucleic acids (antisense oligonucleotides) that have the ability to target any gene product of interest. Antisense drugs offer opportunities for therapeutic intervention because they act inside the cell to influence protein production by targeting RNA to prevent the production of disease-causing proteins, increase the production of proteins deficient in disease, or target toxic RNAs that are unable to generate proteins, Isis said.

Stanley T. Crooke, Isis’ chief executive officer, told the San Diego Union-Tribune the partnership with AstraZeneca will allow Isis to gain significant experience in kidney therapeutics.

“We use transactions with big pharma to move the (antisense) technology into new spaces,” Crooke told the Union-Tribune. “We have experience in the kidney, but one of the objectives in this collaboration is to really learn about ASOs in the kidney, what they can do, what they can't do, where they can go, and really get into that in depth.”

The collaboration with AstraZeneca is another major collaborative deal for Isis. The company also has an antisense alliance with Biogen, Inc. to advance the treatment of neurological and neuromuscular disorders. In April Isis earned $10 million in milestone payments from the Boston-based pharmaceutical company associated with the validation of an undisclosed target to treat a neurological disorder. This is the ninth program to advance, which includes four drugs in development, under Isis' and Biogen’s alliance.

Isis has four drugs in development with Biogen, including ISIS-SMNRx, ISIS-DMPK-2.5Rx and two drugs to undisclosed targets, the company said. Parshall said to date the Biogen deal has generated $329 million.

Also in April Isis inked a deal with Bayer HealthCare to develop and market ISIS-FXIRx, a treatment and preventative for thrombosis.

Isis has other collaborative deals with the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, Genzyme Corporation and Roche to develop drugs.