Benzinga | Apr 26, 2021 04:02PM EDT

Sentia Medical Sciences and Neurocrine Biosciences Enter into Strategic Collaboration to Discover Novel CRF Peptides

Sentia Medical Sciences Inc. today announced that they have entered into a research collaboration with Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) aimed at discovering novel, long-acting corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) receptor antagonist peptide therapeutics. The collaboration will leverage Sentia's proprietary peptide-based platform and Neurocrine's drug development expertise in CRF biology to develop and commercialize medicines with the potential to treat a variety of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis modulated diseases.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sentia will provide to Neurocrine an exclusive license to existing preclinical CRF receptor antagonist peptide compounds. Additionally, Sentia and Neurocrine will work together to discover novel peptide antagonists targeting CRF and advance them to development candidate stage, after which Neurocrine would be solely responsible for all further development, manufacturing, regulatory and commercial activities. As part of the collaboration, Sentia will receive an up-front payment and committed research funding from Neurocrine to support discovery efforts. Sentia is eligible to receive milestone and royalty payments based on products developed from this collaboration.