Alnylam and Takeda strike $150m drug-licensing deal
For the second time in as many months, Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. has struck a major deal with a Massachusetts biotech company.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., based in Cambridge, yesterday said it inked a drug-licensing partnership with Takeda worth at least $150 million. In April, Takeda said it would buy Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., one of the state's largest biotechs, for $8.8 billion, giving it a major presence in Massachusetts. Millennium has 1,000 employees, including 800 at its Cambridge headquarters.
The Alnylam agreement includes a $100 million up-front payment, $50 million in near-term technology transfer payments, and more than $850 million in potential milestone payments and royalties, depending on how successful the companies are in developing and marketing new treatments.
Alnylam, which made a similar deal with Swiss drug company Roche last summer, has attracted attention from major drug makers and investors alike for its early efforts to develop drugs through RNA interference technology, a way to "silence" nettlesome genes in the body that are thought to be associated with disease. In addition, Alnylam has smaller partnerships with Medtronic Inc., Novartis AG, and Cambridge-based Biogen Idec Inc.
Broadpoint Capital analyst Simos Simeonidis said in a research note the Takeda deal should quiet skeptics who thought Roche would be the only pharmaceutical "willing to dig that deep into its pocket for yet another large up-front fee."
But investors shrugged off the news. Alnylam shares slipped 3 percent to $28.45 yesterday. In an interview, Simeonidis said investors already expected another large licensing deal prior to yesterday's announcement. The company has a market value of about $1.1 billion.
RNAi research stems in part from a 1998 discovery by Craig Mello, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School at Worcester, and Andrew Fire of Stanford University, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine. Mello also helped found RXi Pharmaceuticals, a Worcester-based firm Simeonidis expects will reach its own RNAi licensing deal this year.
Other companies, including Merck & Co., are also working on RNAi. Merck bought another RNAi company, Sirna Therapeutics Inc., in 2006.
