Rat­tled by im­mune re­spons­es, Spark will pay $30M-plus to get Se­lec­ta’s help in end­ing threat

Over the week­end at ASH, Spark Ther­a­peu­tics was forced to con­cede that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had tracked an­oth­er im­mune re­sponse to its gene ther­a­py for he­mo­phil­ia B — ex­act­ly the sort of thing that the com­pa­ny doesn’t want to see.

Now it’s do­ing some­thing about it to try and make sure it doesn’t hap­pen again in the rest of the pipeline.

Spark $ONCE will spend $30 mil­lion in a mix of up­front and near term eq­ui­ty pay­ments as it buys in­to Se­lec­ta Bio­sciences $SELB — one of the brain­chil­dren of MIT’s Bob Langer — which has a nanopar­ti­cle plat­form that can be used to blunt im­mune re­spons­es. And the biotech will kick in up to $430 mil­lion more in mile­stones for every suc­cess­ful pro­gram they work on to­geth­er.

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