News Feature | August 6, 2014

Roche To Buy Santaris Pharma For Up To $450M

By Estel Grace Masangkay

Roche announced that it will acquire Santaris Pharma, a private clinical stage biopharmaceutical firm focused on RNA-targeted therapies, for up to $450 million.

Under the agreement of the transaction, Roche will make an upfront payment of $250 million in cash to Santaris’ shareholders as well as up to $250 million in additional contingent payments once specific predetermined milestones are met.

J. Donald deBethizy, President and CEO of Santaris Pharma, said, “Roche and Santaris Pharma have complementary capabilities… The acquisition combines Santaris Pharma’s next-generation antisense technology and LNA expertise with Roche’s deep experience in disease biology, chemistry, drug safety, drug formulation, delivery, and development.”

However, this isn’t the first time these two have joined forces. The two companies collaborated before in an up to $148 million alliance to develop RNA-targeted therapies using Santaris’ Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) platform. LNA, also referred to as BNA (Bicyclic or Bridged Nucleic Acid) belongs to an emerging class of revolutionary RNA-based therapies and is designed to overcome the limitations of earlier antisense and siRNA technologies. LNA allows fast delivery of drug candidates to both mRNA and microRNA in diseases in which traditional antibodies and small molecules have difficulty reaching.

The technology uses a combination of small sized drug candidates with high bonding affinity and metabolic stability that makes it easier to influence specific RNA targets. Santaris has collaborated with several pharmaceutical companies in the past other than Roche to leverage LNA in drug discovery, including GlaxoSmithKline and Isarna Therapeutics.

John C. Reed, Head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development, said, “Today there are many disease targets that are very challenging or even impossible to reach with small molecules or antibodies. We believe the LNA platform provides the means to efficiently discover and develop an important new class of medicines that may address the significant needs of patients across multiple therapeutic areas.”

Roche said it will retain Santaris’ operations in Denmark under the new name Roche Innovation Center Copenhagen. The acquisition of Santaris is expected to be completed this month.