Did No­var­tis get $150M worth of pos­i­tive PhII car­dio da­ta from Akcea?

Akcea has $150 mil­lion rid­ing on the Phase II da­ta it just post­ed for a car­dio drug.

The com­pa­ny $AK­CA, a close­ly held af­fil­i­ate of Io­n­is $IONS, says that APO(a)-LRx — part­nered with No­var­tis — proved in Phase II that it could sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce high Lp(a) lev­els in at-risk car­dio pa­tients. That’s a key bio­mark­er for car­dio risk.

Back in ear­ly 2017 No­var­tis hand­ed over $225 mil­lion in near-term pay­ments, split be­tween fees, an up­front and an eq­ui­ty stake, and promised $1.13 bil­lion more in de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion mile­stones for a world­wide op­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion pact on this drug and one oth­er. And they in­clud­ed an op­tion fee of $150 mil­lion if the drug pass­es muster in the up­com­ing end-of-Phase II meet­ing with the FDA, point­ing them to a big Phase III pro­gram.

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