December 23, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
South San Francisco, Calif.-based Cytokinetics, Incorporated announced today it has expanded its collaboration agreement with Tokyo, Japan-based Astellas Pharma Inc . The two companies have been working together to advance novel skeletal sarcomere targeted therapies, especially for the development of CK-2127107, a fast skeletal troponin activator.
Under the updated agreement, Astellas will pay Cytokinetics $55 million, broken into a $30 million upfront license fee, a purchase of $10 million of Cytokinetics’ common stock, and $15 million in milestone payments. Also, Astellas may pay over $20 million to Cytokinetics to reimburse the company for planned research and development expenses over the next two years.
The deal is potentially very lucrative. Cytokinetics is eligible to receive over $600 million in pre-commercialization and commercialization milestone fees. Over $100 million of that figure is payable for each application of CK-2127107 for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and other neuromuscular disorders. Escalating royalties are also included.
The original deal was inked in 2013. The joint research programs have extended through 2016.
“We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Astellas to enable the joint pursuit of CK-2127107 in SMA and other potential neuromuscular indications as well as the indications which were the initial focus of our collaboration,” said Robert Blum, Cytokinetics’ president and chief executive in a statement. “We are impressed with Astellas’ strategic vision for skeletal muscle activators and look forward to increasing the scope of our activities to prioritize the treatment of neuromuscular diseases that may benefit from our novel mechanism approach to increased muscle function and time to muscle fatigue.”
In November of this year, Astellas announced an R&D and commercialization agreement with Cambridge, Mass.-based Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc. That agreement focused on compounds that modulate the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) through the use of Proteostasis’s proprietary “Disease Relevant Translation” and “Proteostasis Network” platform.”
That deal has Proteostasis being eligible for research funding, future development and commercial milestones that could total more than $400 million as well as tiered royalties. The deal has a potential collaboration value of $1.2 billion.
As part of this new deal between Cytokinetics and Astellas, Cytokinetics will begin a Phase II clinical trial of CK-2127107 in patients with SMA, expected to start in 2015.
“We are excited to expand our collaboration with Cytokinetics and to advance this drug candidate into Phase II,” said Yoshihiko Hatanaka, president and CEO of Astellas, in a statement. “We are encouraged by the result of the completed Phase 1 studies for CK-2127107 and are hopeful for the future of this new frontier of muscle biology. The expansion of our alliance is a testament to our productive collaboration together and illustrates the broad potential that we envision for this program.”
