Allergan PLC acquired through wholly-owned subsidiary Allergan Pharmaceuticals International Ltd. exclusive access and the option to license up to five of Cambridge, Mass.-based Editas Medicine Inc.’s genome editing ocular programs.
The acquisitions include Editas’ lead program for leber congenital amaurosis—an inherited retinal degenerative disease characterized by severe loss of vision at birth and leading to blindness.
Allergan will pay $90 million cash upfront, with additional near-term milestone payments related to the disease.
Editas Chief Executive Katrine Bosley said the gene that causes leber congenital amaurosis is a good candidate for the company’s technology.
“The gene in question is rather large … too large for traditional gene therapy,” Bosley said in a conference call with analysts and investors after the deal announcement. “… gene editing [offers] a unique approach to create a correction. The [disease] really lends itself to gene editing.”
Editas specializes in genomic medicine. It uses Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats to develop treatment for diseases at the DNA level. The technology can be programmed to target specific stretches of genetic code and to edit DNA at precise locations in the human genome.
Allergan is chartered in Dublin, Ireland, and maintains its U.S. headquarters in Parsippany, N.J. An Allergan spokesperson said the development alliance is early-stage with no near term impact on Irvine, which comprises its U.S. Specialized Therapeutics segment encompassing eye care, aesthetic medicine and therapeutics.
“The scientific team at Allergan and Editas will work together to develop transformative genomic medicine for eye diseases … how powerful combining our two companies could be for this asset,” Allergan Chief Research and Development Officer David Nicholson said on the conference call.
Allergan and Editas have market caps of about $80.7 billion and $913.7 million, respectively.
Allergan has been on the hunt for deals since being bought by Actavis PLC in 2015.
