Bio­gen makes an­oth­er bold Alzheimer’s bet, drop­ping $350M up­front to part­ner with genome-edit­ing fo­cused Sang­amo

While the fate of Bio­gen’s res­ur­rect­ed Alzheimer’s drug ad­u­canum­ab re­mains un­cer­tain, the Cam­bridge, MA-based drug­mak­er is join­ing forces with genome edit­ing com­pa­ny Sang­amo Ther­a­peu­tics to de­vel­op ther­a­pies for neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions.

Sang­amo is set to re­ceive a meaty $350 mil­lion up­front in cash and stock and is el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive up to $2.37 bil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments, in ad­di­tion to roy­al­ties. In re­turn, Bio­gen gets the rights to two Sang­amo pre­clin­i­cal com­pounds: ST-501 (for use in tauopathies in­clud­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease) and ST-502 (for synu­cle­inopathies in­clud­ing Parkin­son’s dis­ease).

“The part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a low­er-cost way to ex­pand its work in neu­ro­log­ic dis­ease,” Cred­it Su­isse’s Evan Seiger­man said in a note, re­fer­ring to Bio­gen.

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