Drugmaker Elan will link up with Massachusetts-based biopharma company Archemix to develop therapeutic aptamers, or proteins that work like antibodies, to treat auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and psoriasis.
The Irish company will pay Archemix $7 million (€5.5 million) upfront to research the project and about $25 million after three years if progress is made.
Archemix stands to receive as much as $350 million, depending on the number of products successfully brought to market as a result of the alliance and on reaching development and sales targets.
"The headline $350 million payments assume everything goes perfectly right, but we assume in turn it would translate to very substantial product opportunities for Elan," said Jack Gorman, an analyst at Davy Stockbrokers. "It is likely that we will see more deals like this in the future." Elan has a partnership with US company Biogen Idec for the MS drug Tysabri. It secured European approval for Tysabri at the end of June.
"We selected Elan from a number of potential pharmaceutical partners because of its demonstrated expertise in the clinical and regulatory landscape of auto-immune disease," said Dr Errol De Souza, chief executive of Archemix.
The two companies are seeking to develop aptamer therapeutics to Interleukin-23, or IL-23, a cytokine or protein that acts as a mediator in chronic auto-immune inflammatory diseases. Blocking IL-23 may control clinical symptoms of these diseases and still maintain the body's ability to fight infection, Archemix said.
