With AveX­is com­ing up in the rear view mir­ror, Bio­gen and Io­n­is go back to the draw­ing board on SMA

A year af­ter Bio­gen $BI­IB and Io­n­is $IONS nailed down an ap­proval for Spin­raza to treat spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy, launch­ing one of the most ex­pen­sive drugs now on the mar­ket, the part­ners are com­ing back to­geth­er to see if they can one-up them­selves. And they’re do­ing it as a promis­ing gene ther­a­py makes its way to a pos­si­ble near-term meet up with reg­u­la­tors.

Io­n­is bagged a $25 mil­lion up­front for the deal, which puts them back in the lab us­ing an­ti­sense tech to iden­ti­fy new ther­a­pies for SMA. There are al­so un­spec­i­fied de­vel­op­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stones built in­to the deal, but the part­ners aren’t dis­cussing that right now.

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