Shares of Akcea Therapeutics (NASDAQ: AKCA) are up 30% at 12:25 p.m. EDT after the biotech announced a licensing deal for its drug candidate, AKCEA-ANGPTL3-Lrx, with Pfizer (NYSE: PFE). Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IONS), which is still a majority owner of its spin-off Akcea, saw its shares jump 4%.
AKCEA-ANGPTL3-LRx uses Ionis' antisense technology to knock down expression of a protein called angiopoietin-like 3 (ANGPTL3), which is responsible for regulating cholesterol, glucose, and energy metabolism. The drug is currently in a phase 2 study of patients with type 2 diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia (high triglyceride levels) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which should read out in the first half of next year.
Akcea will get $250 million upfront from Pfizer. Ionis is due half of that payment, but Akcea will pay for it with $125 million in its stock. Akcea and Ionis are eligible to split development, regulatory, and sales milestone payments of up to $1.3 billion from Pfizer. They'll also split tiered, double-digit royalties on annual worldwide net sales of the drug if it's approved.