Joining forces with Skyhawk, C4 Therapeutics, Biogen buys more shots on goal on SMA, Alzheimer’s

Amber Tong – Senior Editor

These days at Bio­gen, the spot­light tends to fall on one of two pro­grams: Its com­mer­cial SMA drug Spin­raza, and the ex­per­i­men­tal Alzheimer’s ther­a­py ad­u­canum­ab — and its deal­mak­ing team knows it.

In twin deals an­nounced on Fri­day, Bio­gen $BI­IB is ty­ing up with Sky­hawk Ther­a­peu­tics to ex­plore small mol­e­cule RNA splic­ing mod­i­fiers for spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy and sign­ing on C4 Ther­a­peu­tics to re­search the ap­pli­ca­tion of pro­tein degra­da­tion tech in Alzheimer’s — among oth­er ear­ly-stage projects in neu­rol­o­gy.

The fi­nan­cial terms dis­closed so far add up to $489 mil­lion be­tween the two pacts.

Bill Haney’s Sky­hawk has the more de­lin­eat­ed deal: $74 mil­lion up­front for re­search ser­vices and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights on pre­clin­i­cal can­di­dates to treat SMA, mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and ad­di­tion­al neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. Any ther­a­pies re­sult­ing from the col­lab­o­ra­tion are up for grabs for Bio­gen, which will be re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

Sky­hawk’s work is in­spired by an ex­pe­ri­enced group led by co-founder and CSO Kath­leen Mc­Carthy, who worked at Roche on the SMA drug RG7916 — now in piv­otal tri­als af­ter scor­ing pos­i­tive ear­ly re­sults — with a stint at the Spinal Mus­cu­lar At­ro­phy Foun­da­tion, where she had worked on a small mol­e­cule ther­a­peu­tic tar­get­ing mR­NA-pro­tein in­ter­ac­tions for SMA.

Both Roche and No­var­tis are now hot on the trail of Bio­gen’s Spin­raza, the pi­o­neer­ing ther­a­py in the field that’s al­so one of the world’s most ex­pen­sive drugs.

“The SMA piece of the Bio­gen col­lab­o­ra­tion is es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ing as: (1) com­pe­ti­tion in the space has in­creased and (2) an oral small mol­e­cule drug from Roche has re­cent­ly shown very promis­ing ev­i­dence of ac­tiv­i­ty, val­i­dat­ing the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the oral splic­ing mod­u­la­tion ap­proach,” Stifel an­a­lysts wrote in a note.

C4, mean­while, will help Bio­gen iden­ti­fy tar­gets in Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s and oth­er dis­eases, and pro­vide the tech to tag these dis­ease-caus­ing pro­teins for de­struc­tion by the cell’s in­nate degra­da­tion mech­a­nism, ac­cord­ing to Michael Ehlers, EVP of R&D at Bio­gen. The whole col­lab­o­ra­tion is worth $415 mil­lion and though there’s no men­tion of the up­front, Bio­gen says it ex­pects to record an R&D ex­pense of $15 to $25 mil­lion in Q4 2018.

Found­ed by Jay Brad­ner be­fore he took the reins of the No­var­tis In­sti­tutes for Bio­Med­ical Re­search, C4 has on deck a col­lab­o­ra­tion with stealthy an­ti-ag­ing start­up Cal­i­co and an­oth­er on­col­o­gy pact with Roche, which got a $900 mil­lion ex­pan­sion Fri­day morn­ing.

For more information visit:

www.skyhawktx.com

https://www.linkedin.com/company/skyhawk-therapeutics/

https://twitter.com/Skyhawk_Tx

SKYHAWK MEDIA CONTACT:

Maura McCarthy

maura@skyhawktx.com

Original Article