Pfizer, Santaris Expand RNA Pact

Santaris Pharma and Pfizer have expanded their collaboration for the development and commercialization of RNA-targeted medicines using Santaris Pharma’s Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) drug platform. Santaris will receive a $14 million payment from Pfizer for access to its LNA technology and is eligible to receive milestone payments of as much as $600 million and royalties on sales of products for as many as 10 new RNA targets selected by Pfizer.

The original collaboration began in January 2009 between Santaris and Wyeth, which was acquired by Pfizer. Pfizer has advanced several programs under the original collaboration and has reached a number of early milestones.

“The expansion of our collaboration with Santaris Pharma demonstrates our strategic intention to partner with innovative biopharm/biotech companies to explore novel drug design technologies as a potential source for breakthrough therapeutics,” said Mikael Dolsten, president of Worldwide R&D at Pfizer. He added, “We have been encouraged by the progress of our oligonucleotide collaboration with Santaris Pharma and are eager to explore this expanded partnership for potential additional LNA-based drug projects.”

“The expanded alliance with Pfizer is a result of our successful collaboration over the last two years and provides further evidence that our LNA Drug Platform is rapidly becoming the technology-of-choice for partners interested in developing RNA-targeted medicines,” said Soeren Tulstrup, president and chief executive officer of Santaris. “The LNA Drug Platform is well positioned to deliver viable drug candidates today, and we are excited to expand our relationship with Pfizer to pursue our goal of making RNA-targeted drugs for important diseases a reality.”