Monday, October 20, 2008

Archemix does deal with Lilly over aptamer IP

By Mass High Tech Staff

Biotechnology company Archemix Corp. has signed a licensing deal with drug giant with Eli Lilly and Co. around Archemix’s short nucleic acid — or aptamer — technology.

According to officials, the deal allows Cambridge-based Archemix to license rights to certain intellectual property from Lilly and gives Lilly an option to conduct R&D evaluation of aptamers for certain drug targets. Lilly also has the rights under the deal to sign an exclusive license with Archemix for up to two of the aptamer targets. No financial details of the deal were released.

Aptamers are short nucleic acid sequences that strongly and specifically bind to protein targets and can be designed to function for a specified period of time.

In August, Archemix entered into a licensing deal worth up to $200 million with Ribomic Inc. That deal gave Tokyo-based Ribomic a worldwide, non-exclusive license to some of Archemix’s intellectual property rights to develop aptamers against multiple targets, for which Ribomic will pay Archemix $6 million up front.

Ribomic could also pay a further fee to make the licenses exclusive on a target-by-target basis, according to Archemix officials. If that option is exercised, Archemix would be eligible to receive milestone payments and a royalty on any marketed products developed under the agreement.

Archemix had flirted with the public markets, having filed for an IPO on July 25, 2007, hoping to raise $69 million, and had planned to sell 4.5 million shares at $12 to $14 each. The company cancelled its IPO plans in February 2008 due to “unfavorable market conditions.”