Date: 2013-03-21
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: messenger RNA therapeutics™
Company: AstraZeneca (UK) Moderna Therapeutics (USA)
Therapeutic area: Cardiovascular diseases - Cancer- Oncology - Metabolic diseases - Renal diseases
Type agreement: R&D
development
commercialisation
Action mechanism: Messenger RNA therapeutics™ are an entirely new treatment approach that enables the body to produce therapeutic protein in vivo, opening up new treatment options for a wide range of diseases that cannot be addressed today using existing technologies.
Disease: cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases, renal diseases, cancer
Details: AstraZeneca has announced an exclusive agreement with Moderna Therapeutics to discover, develop and commercialise pioneering messenger RNA therapeutics™ for the treatment of serious cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases as well as cancer. Through this agreement, AstraZeneca has the option to select up to 40 drug products for clinical development and Moderna will be entitled to development and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties on drug sales ranging from high single digits to low double digits for each product. AstraZeneca will lead the preclinical, clinical development and commercialisation of therapeutics resulting from the agreement and Moderna will be responsible for designing and manufacturing the messenger RNA against selected targets.
Moderna’s approach uses proprietary messenger RNA containing naturally occurring nucleotide analogues, which are designed to stimulate the body’s natural ability to produce intracellular and secreted therapeutic proteins without triggering an innate immune response. The secreted proteins will be released into the bloodstream to potentially restore function elsewhere in the body. Using messenger RNA also has the potential advantage of dramatically reducing the time and expense associated with creating therapeutic proteins using current recombinant technologies.
Financial terms: Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will make an upfront payment of $240 million. AstraZeneca will have exclusive access to select any target of its choice in cardiometabolic diseases, as well as selected targets in oncology, over a period of up to five years for subsequent development of messenger RNA. In addition, Moderna is entitled to an additional $180 million for the achievement of three technical milestones.
Latest news:
