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news.Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a division of Wyeth, and Santaris Pharma, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, have entered into a worldwide strategic alliance to discover, develop and commercialize new medicines based on Santaris Pharma's locked nucleic acid drug platform, which allows specific targeting and regulation of microRNAs and messenger RNAs as a means to affect gene expression mediated by the targeted RNAs.
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Under the terms of the agreement, Santaris Pharma will receive an upfront payment of $7 million in cash and Wyeth will make a $10 million equity investment in Santaris Pharma. Santaris Pharma may receive further milestone payments of up to $83 million for each of 10 potential targets.
In addition, Santaris Pharma would receive royalties on the worldwide sales of all products arising from the alliance. The term of the research portion of the collaboration is three years. Wyeth has the right to extend the research portion up to two additional years.
Wyeth will select the RNA targets against which Santaris Pharma will use their proprietary locked nucleic acid drug platform to generate unique drug candidates. Wyeth will be responsible for the development and commercialization of products arising from the alliance.
Mikael Dolsten, president of Wyeth Research, said: With this alliance Wyeth explores a fourth platform technology targeting RNAs, which complements our expertise in small molecules, vaccines and protein-based therapeutics. This will increase our ability to develop and bring to market innovative, high-value medicines that have the potential to address significant unmet needs in critical therapeutic areas.