February 10, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Cash-flush biotech Alnylam Pharmaceuticals () will add 100 new jobs in the next year, Chief Executive Officer John Maraganore told a conference in New York Tuesday, as the company continues to broaden and expand its reach in 2015.
“We have 250 people now, and we will have 350 by year end,” Maraganore said of the new jobs, though he did not specify if they would be at the firm’s Cambridge, Mass.-based headquarters or elsewhere.
Alnylam made news in January when it said it aims to have three drugs on the market and 10 in clinical trials by the end of 2020, and will use a secondary stock offering of $450 million to fund that effort. That money will make it one of biotech’s most cash-rich companies, funding it will need to capitalize on the “RNA Renaissance.”
Maraganore the comments as part of a panel at the 17th Annual BIO CEO and Investor Conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Last year, BIO CEO, a well-known annual schmooze-fest for the biotech community, had more than 1,400 attendees from 26 different countries, with around 750 investors and around 1,820 partnering meetings scheduled, according to event organizers.
The news came a year after neighboring Genzyme Corp. bought a 12 percent stake in the company for $700 million in January, as parent company Sanofi doubles down on late-stage clinical results.
The market is also closely watching Alnylam’s Phase I hemophilia treatment ALN-AT3, an evolution Maraganore mused about at BIO on Tuesday.
“Figuring out RNA delivery took a hell of a lot longer than any of us would have liked it to take,” he told the audience, saying the company’s key to RNAi was figuring out how to deliver, or how to get from the outside of the cell to the inside of the cell, for much of its novel therapies.
“Still, 10 years is not that long to take raw science and turn it into something useful,” said Maraganore, who reflected that thanks to a now defunct deal with Roche in 2007, Alnylam was able to survive and now thrive. “We were very fortunate,” he said.
Now, with a RNAi delivery investment of $75 million to $100m annually, within and without a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “We can go we can go ‘light bulb’ RNAi idea to a clinical study in 18 months. It’s just remarkable. We did three INDs last year, and three more this year. We’re in a rhythm.”
Part of that rhythm has been a significant investment in restructuring. Last month, Alnylam said it would implement a new company structure to focus on the three strategic areas of advanced drugs, cardio-metabolic disease and Hepatic Infectious Disease.
It initially made the announcement as part of its Research and Development Day in New York City but it gained traction after the company said it would issue a $450 million stock offering, in an attempt to boost its clinical drug pipeline by 50 percent.
Wall Street appeared to sanction the move, despite any possible dilution to existing shareholders—the stock price of Alnylam dipped only a few percentage points on the announcement last month. Alnylam market cap stands at a hefty $7.8 billion, a whopping rise of 67 percent in the last calendar year, value which has no gone unnoticed.
Alnylam’s new structure will have three distinct units. Its Genetic Medicines division wrap in late-stage drugs patisiran and revusiran, while a new, unnamed unit will tackle cardio-metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemias, hypertension, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Thirdly, its Hepatic Infectious Disease, which could be the potentially most lucrative based on the sheer number of chronic patients and the massive price tags of competitor’s like Gilead ()’s Harvoni and Sovaldi, will be its last component. Alnylam’s strategy there will focus on hepatitis B and hepatitis D, perhaps in an attempt to differentiate itself from larger competitors like Gilead and AbbVie ().
BioSpace Temperature Poll
Who Do You Think Will Be Sanofi’s New CEO? French drugmaker Sanofi said Thursday that it will name a new chief executive in mere weeks, as it attempted to put to rest rumors that the company could not find any executives willing to take the reins after it unceremoniously ousted its previous CEO last fall. Who do you think will soon be crowned king? BioSpace wants your opinion!
