Isis Earns $6 Million AZ Payment

Isis Pharmaceuticals has earned a $6 million payment from AstraZeneca for the continuation of a research collaboration to discover and develop novel antisense therapeutics, which includes three cancer targets. Additionally, Isis and AZ are developing two antisense drugs, ISIS-ARRx and ISIS-STAT3Rx, discovered by Isis and licensed to AZ for the treatment of cancer.
 
The collaboration, originating December 2012, combines AZ’s experience and expertise in developing anti-cancer agents with Isis’ antisense technology platform. With the $6 million payment, Isis has earned $41 million in upfront and milestone payments to date and is eligible to earn additional milestones and royalties on sales of drugs resulting from the collaboration.
 
“We are pleased to be working with AstraZeneca, a global leader in oncology, and are already benefiting from our collaborative efforts. In just six months, we have selected a new development candidate, ISIS-ARRx, to move forward into clinical development to treat patients with prostate cancer and initiated two clinical studies on ISIS-STAT3Rx in patients with advanced lymphomas and liver cancer. We are also making progress selecting the next three oncology targets that we and AstraZeneca will focus our research efforts toward,” said B. Lynne Parshall, chief operating officer at Isis. “We look forward to continuing to expand our cancer franchise with AstraZeneca as we move our research programs forward toward development.”