The three-year collaboration is designed to discover and develop proprietary siRNA molecules against up to five specific targets provided by AstraZeneca. Under terms of the agreement, Silence Therapeutics and AstraZeneca will jointly collaborate in the early phase of identification and optimization of novel siRNA molecules.
AstraZeneca will retain full responsibility for the clinical development and commercialization. Althought the agreement is focused on the respiratory field, there is an option to allow for targets that extend the collaboration into other disease areas of interest to AstraZeneca.
Silence Therapeutics will provide AstraZeneca with a license to its proprietary siRNA technology in return for an initial access fee of $15 million, comprising a payment of $5 million, plus an equity investment of $10 million. As a result of this agreement, AstraZeneca will hold 2.94% of the total voting rights of Silence Therapeutics.
Iain Ross, chairman of Silence Therapeutics, said: “This transaction provides further validation of the potential application of Silence Therapeutics’ proprietary AtuRNAi molecules and our leading position in the fast developing field of RNAi therapeutics.”