Eli Lilly announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Adverum Therapeutics, a biotech with expertise in developing gene therapies to treat eye diseases.
A strong draw of the company for Lilly is its lead candidate ixoberogene soroparvovec (Ixo-vec), a gene therapy for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) designed to be a one-time treatment for the condition.
Ixo-vec was developed using the company’s next-generation adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector platform and has shown encouraging clinical results so far in both Phase I and II clinical trials. It is now in Phase III clinical trials.
There are other gene therapies in development for wet AMD, for example, those developed by Sanofi and Regenxbio, but Adverum’s is one of, if not the most, advanced for this indication to date.
“Ixo-vec has the potential to transform wet AMD treatment from a paradigm of chronic care with repeated intravitreal injections to a convenient one-time therapy,” said Andrew Adams, Lilly group vice president, Molecule Discovery in a press statement.
“We are eager to welcome Adverum colleagues to Lilly and to help accelerate this innovative medicine to patients.”
In addition to its gene therapy for wet AMD, Adverum has other candidates designed to treat conditions such as geographic atrophy, retinitis pigmentosa, and achromatopsia, among others, in its pipeline.
Adverum Biotechnologies changed its name and structure following a 2016 reverse merger between U.S.-based Avalanche Biotechnologies and French biotech Annapurna Therapeutics. The merger closed in May 2016 and created the combined company now known as Adverum.
The acquisition by Lilly comes just in time for Adverum which was running short of cash to run the trials needed to bring its gene therapies to market. The deal is worth around $74 million upfront but could be worth a lot more to shareholders (up to $260 million) if Ixo-vec is approved by the FDA within seven years and if annual global sales of Ixo-vec exceed $1 billion within ten years.
The acquisition of Ixo-vec and the rest of Adverum’s portfolio will enhance Lilly’s overall gene therapy portfolio, which includes Verve Therapeutics’ gene-editing programs for cardiovascular diseases, RNA-based therapies, and gene therapies targeting metabolic diseases and chronic liver diseases, as well as genetic hearing loss therapies.
