Exploring the Latest Cardiovascular SiRNA Drugs Deal by Argo Biopharma: A Guide to Rapidly Accessing Transaction Insights

On January 7, 2024, Argo Biopharma announced that the company has entered into two exclusive licensing collaboration agreements with Novartis Pharma regarding RNAi therapeutics. The first agreement entails exclusively licensing the global development and commercialization rights of Argo's Phase I clinical product for cardiovascular diseases to Novartis; in addition, Novartis will also obtain the option to select up to two additional target compounds for cardiovascular diseases. Under the second agreement, Argo grants Novartis the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize another one of its cardiovascular disease products, currently in Phase I/IIa clinical trials, in all regions outside Greater China. According to the terms of the agreements, Argo will receive an upfront payment of $185 million and is eligible to receive potential option and milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on commercial sales, with the potential total transaction value amounting to $4.165 billion. Argo's key drugs include BW-00112, BW-00163, and BW-20805, among which BW-20805 is an siRNA drug. Currently, this product is undergoing Phase I clinical trials in Australia, aiming to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and PK/PD of BW-20805. 

About BW-20805

As a siRNA drug, BW-20805 works by interfering with the expression of specific genes involved in the disease process. This mechanism of action makes it a promising candidate for the treatment of various conditions related to the immune system, cardiovascular system, and musculoskeletal system. It obtained a Clinical Implied Permission from the CDE in October 2023 for the treatment of Hereditary Angioedema (HAE). Click the image below to directly embark on the exploration journey with the BW-20805!

About Argo Biopharma

Argo Biopharma was founded in April 2021, focusing on the development of siRNA therapeutics and established by several scientists with rich experience in siRNA drug development who returned from overseas. The company is committed to developing a new generation of siRNA drugs to provide better treatment options for patients worldwide. Since its inception, the company has completed several rounds of financing, accumulating over 700 million yuan in total. The team has many years of professional experience in the entire RNAi drug development process, including nucleic acid sequence design, chemical modification, GalNAc delivery technology, extra-hepatic delivery techniques, oligonucleotide synthesis, and CMC.

Argo has developed an industry-leading RNAi platform technology named RADS (RNAi molecules with Remarkable Activity, Durability, and Safety), which demonstrates Argo's technical capabilities in delivery, chemical modification, and sequence design, consistently generating top-tier RNAi therapies. Currently, the company is actively advancing multiple preclinical research and development pipelines, with several pipelines at the IND-enabling stage. In 2023, multiple Phase I clinical trial pipelines were approved for clinical trial applications.

How to get the latest progress on drug deals?

If you would like to access the latest transaction event information, you can click on the 'Deal' module from the homepage of the Synapse database. Within the Deal module, you can search for global pharmaceutical transaction information using labels such as Drugs, Organization, Target, Drug Type, Deal Date. 

Furthermore, you can obtain the original link to the transaction coverage by clicking on the "Deal Name."

In the analysis view, you can see the most active assignors, assignees, popular targets, and other dimensions of analysis, as well as the distribution of research and development statuses at the time of the transaction, to help you better understand the search results.

The Synapse database also supports the ability to view current transactions from the dimension of "drugs" (by selecting "drugs" from the "Adjust Dimension" dropdown menu above). Targeting transactions involving renowned pharmaceutical companies that are of interest to the industry, such as Merck, Roche, etc., Synapse has identified a group of "leading companies" through drugs that have achieved global sales exceeding 1 billion US dollars in 2022. Transactions involving drugs from these leading companies can be filtered by clicking on the "Leading Company" tag on the left-hand side.

In addition to the drug transaction module, you can also view related transaction history on the drug detail page and the institution detail page.

Click on the image below to embark on a brand new journey of drug discovery!