Benzinga | Jul 29, 2021 05:01PM EDT

Alnylam Pharma Reports Collaboration With PeptiDream To Discover, Develop Peptide-siRNA Conjugates For Targeted Delivery Of RNAi Therapeutics to Broader Range Of Extrahepatic Tissues

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY), the leading RNAi therapeutics company, and PeptiDream, Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4587), the leading peptide-based drug discovery company with its proprietary Peptide Discovery Platform System (PDPS), announced today a license and collaboration agreement to discover and develop peptide-siRNA conjugates to create multiple opportunities to deliver RNAi therapeutics to tissues outside the liver. Through this collaboration, the companies will collaborate to select and optimize peptides for targeted delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules to a wide range of cell types and tissues via specific interactions with receptors expressed on the target cells.

Under the terms of the alliance, Alnylam will select a set of receptors for PeptiDream's peptide discovery platform. PeptiDream will select, optimize, and synthesize peptides for each receptor. Alnylam will then generate peptide-siRNA conjugates and perform in vitro and in vivo studies to support final peptide selection. The collaboration has the potential to yield multiple treatment opportunities by targeting disease causing mRNA transcripts in a wide variety of tissue types.

"Having solved delivery of RNAi therapeutics to the liver and made substantial preclinical progress on in vivo delivery to the CNS, eye, and lung, we are now adding to our suite of delivery technologies that have the potential to enable efficient delivery of siRNA to even broader tissue types throughout the human body," said Kevin Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Alnylam. "We are excited to enter into this collaborative research agreement with PeptiDream, an industry leader in the discovery and optimization of peptide ligands against a wide variety of receptors. Through this collaboration, we hope to identify robust ligand-receptor pairs for extrahepatic tissue delivery, similar to the GalNAc-ASGPR pair that we have pioneered for effective liver delivery."

"We look forward to partnering with Alnylam to leverage our PDPS technology and peptide discovery capabilities to identify novel ligands against Alnylam selected target receptors that can facilitate delivery of drug payloads to a broad range of extrahepatic tissues," said Patrick C. Reid Ph.D., President and Representative Director of PeptiDream. "This deal further expands on our strategy of using peptides to deliver a variety of therapeutic payloads (as peptide drug-conjugates) to disease cells/tissues in a targeted fashion. We hope this partnership will enable the creation of innovative peptide-siRNA conjugates in a variety of diseases and unlock many new therapeutic opportunities."

Under the terms of the agreement, PeptiDream will receive an upfront payment from Alnylam as well as R&D funding over the term of the research collaboration, as provided in the agreement. PeptiDream may also receive payments based on the achievement of specified development, regulatory, and commercial milestones potentially totaling up to $2.2 billion (?244 billion*1). In addition, PeptiDream is eligible to receive low-to-mid single digit royalties on sales on any suchAlnylam products.

*1: USD/ JPY currency conversion rate: 110.9