Regenxbio said today it has granted an exclusive worldwide research license to its NAV® AAV8 and AAV9 vectors to Biogen toward developing gene therapy candidates for two rare genetic vision disorders in humans.
Neither the two disorders nor the value of the licensing agreement—which includes sublicensing rights—were disclosed.
Regenxbio said it will receive from Biogen an upfront payment, ongoing fees, milestone payments, and royalties on net sales of products incorporating the licensed intellectual property.
“This collaboration will enable us to expand our pipeline of treatments with the potential to improve health outcomes in diseases of the eye, an ideal setting for the delivery of targeted gene therapies,” Olivier Danos, Ph.D., svp, cell & gene therapy at Biogen, said in a statement.
The gene therapy candidates will be based on Regenxbio’s NAV Technology Platform®, an adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene delivery platform consisting of exclusive rights to more than 100 novel AAV vectors, including AAV7, AAV8, AAV9, and AAVrh10.
“This license agreement provides new validation of the potential of our NAV Technology Platform in ocular indications and is an important step in advancing NAV-based gene therapies to people suffering from rare genetic vision disorders,” Regenxbio President and CEO Kenneth T. Mills added.
Regenxbio, which went public last year, was formed by a collaboration between FoxKiser and James Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the gene therapy program in the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania..
Dr. Wilson, the company’s chief scientific advisor, is clinical development editor of Human Gene Therapy, a journal published by GEN publisher Mary Ann Liebert Inc., and was editor-in-chief of the journal from 2003 until last year.
