Secarna Pharmaceuticals has signed a Research, Development and Transfer Agreement with Lipigon Pharmaceuticals AB (Lipigon), in which Lipigon will get certain antisense drug candidates, which were developed with Secarna’s proprietary LNAplus platform, including the corresponding patent portfolio.
The antisense oligonucleotide candidates targeting the ANGPTL gene family for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases were previously generated by Secarna and Lipigon under a target validation and drug discovery collaboration. Going forward, Lipigon will fund and continue the development of the acquired assets and Secarna receives payments customary for such a transaction, Secarna said, without disclosing financial details.
Inhibiting the ANGPTL gene family members ANGPTL3 and ANGPTL4 with Secarna’s LNAplusTM based antisense oligonucleotides has shown to positively affect plasma lipid levels. Therefore, safe and effective drug candidates addressing these targets have the potential to become novel treatments of orphan diseases such as Familial Chylomicronaemia Syndrome or Homozygote Familial Hypercholesterolemia, but also more common cardiovascular, metabolic liver, kidney diseases or diseases as dyslipidaemia.
“For the past two years, we have collaborated with our colleagues at Lipigon under a highly productive discovery and research partnership. We are excited that Lipigon has selected therapeutic lead candidates generated from Secarna’s LNAplusTM platform and will now swiftly progress them through the next stages of development”, said Jonas Renz, Managing Director and Co-founder of Secarna Pharmaceuticals.
“Antisense-based therapeutics have gained strong industry interest over the past five to seven years as evidenced by major licensing and acquisitions transactions. We are very pleased that our successful collaboration with Secarna has generated fully optimized, patented LNAplusTM antisense drug candidates ready to enter late stage pre-clinical development and GMP manufacturing,” said Stefan K. Nilsson, CEO and Co-founder of Lipigon.