Friday, January 20, 2012

Alnylam to cut workforce by a third

By Rodney Brown

A day after filing  a patent infringement suit against a California company,  Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. said that it will cut its work force by 33 percent in a corporate restructuring move.

In a release Thursday, Cambridge-based Alnylam (Nasdaq: ALNY) said that it could save approximately $20 million in cash operating expenses this year alone through the staff reduction, when added to other, unspecified “external” costs. To make that level of savings, Alnylam will have to pony up approximately $4 million to cover things like employee severance, benefits, and other costs. That hit will be taken in the first quarter, the company said.

As of September 2011, Alnylam reported approximately 170 employees, meaning about 55 jobs will be cut.

Alnylam CEO John Maraganore said in the release that the company would pare down its pipeline, focusing mainly on its ALN-TTR and ALN-PCS program. Maraganore was quoted in the release saying: “As we effect our ongoing transformation from a platform company to a product company, now is the time to focus our near-term efforts and resources on what we believe to be our highest value opportunities; specifically, accelerated clinical development plans for our programs in transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis and hemophilia, while advancing other pipeline programs through existing alliances and new partnerships that we aim to form in the future.”

Partnerships have long been a strong source of revenue for Alnylam. In November, it granted an intellectual property license related to its InterfeRx program to Spanish RNAi-focused biotech Sylentis SA, a subsidiary of Grupo Zeltia. Also that month, Alnylam entered into a collaboration deal with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in which the U.K. pharmaceutical giant will use Alnylam’s new VaxiRNA enhanced virus production platform in the development of certain GSK vaccine products, such as a vaccine for influenza. Other companies Alnylam has teamed up with include Merck, Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, Roche, Takeda, Kyowa Hakko Kirin and Cubist.

Earlier this week, Alnylam filed suit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Massachusetts against Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. over using patents related to using small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules in a drug development deal. Alnylam licensed the patents originally from Tekmira – technically from its predecessor company Inex Pharmaceuticals Corp. – in an agreement that gives Alnylam exclusive worldwide rights to develop any drugs based on the patents, rights to any revenue from any commercialization of potential drugs, and the ability to grant any sublicenses with any restrictions it deemed fit. According to court documents, on May 30, 2008, Alnylam did sublicense patents back to Tekmira, but under a non-exclusive agreement and just for three gene targets. The suit contends that a Tekmira deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb goes beyond that.