Sangamo, which has been having cash problems, will receive $18 million upfront in licensing fees for its AAV capsid that in preclinical studies has shown the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Eli Lilly is licensing Sangamo Therapeutics’ proprietary adeno-associated virus capsid STAC-BBB for $18 million upfront, the pharma announced on Thursday.
The back-heavy deal will also mean up to $1.4 billion for Sangamo if the pact meets certain milestones. Lilly is also promising tiered royalties on net sales of potential products that arise from the partnership. After the tech transfer from Sangamo, Lilly will be responsible for all research, preclinical and clinical development, as well as regulatory and commercialization activities.
Lilly will be able to use the capsid for one initial target with the option to tack on up to four more targets, each with their own additional licensing fees.
The money will help Sangamo regain its footing after a few rocky months. In December 2024, Sangamo lost a powerhouse partner in Pfizer after the pharma terminated their hemophilia gene therapy deal despite their candidate giroctocogene fitelparvovec hitting its primary endpoint in a Phase III trial. The termination will take effect this month.
In November 2024, the biotech announced that it had $39.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities—just enough to keep the lights on into the first quarter of 2025.
At the heart of Thursday’s licensing deal is STAC-BBB, a proprietary adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid that has shown the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, mediating “robust transduction” and transgene expression in non-human primate studies, as per Sangamo’s website. STAC-BBB can also induce “targeted, potent epigenetic repression” across the brain.
Lilly has yet to reveal the targets it has in mind for Sangamo’s capsid, only saying in the Thursday release that it will use STAC-BBB to deliver genomic medicines “to treat certain diseases of the central nervous system.”
Lilly’s deal with Sangamo is just another in what has been on a dealmaking spree in recent months. In February, the pharma signed back-to-back contracts with South Korea’s OliX Pharmaceuticals and Australia’s AdvanCell.
With OliX, Lilly will be advancing a small interfering RNA therapeutic for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis and other cardiometabolic indications. Meanwhile, the AdvanCell pact is focused on the biotech’s targeted alpha platform for radiopharmaceutical applications. No financial details for those deals have been revealed.
In January, Lilly paid $1 billion upfront—and promised up to $1.5 billion more—for Scorpion Therapeutics’ PI3Kα inhibitor program for solid tumors. Also in January the pharma linked up with Mediar Therapeutics in a back-heavy deal worth over $780 million to target idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
