The deal will mark the fourth industry collaboration for Massachusetts-based company Waltham. Earlier, Skyhawk had signed a partnership with Celgene worth $60 million.

RNA biotech Skyhawk Therapeutics will reportedly sign another R&D deal with Takeda Pharmaceutical company for allowing pharmaceutical company to use platform of biotech to create small molecules which will fix mis-splicing of RNA in neurodegenerative disease.

Reportedly, under the agreement, SkySTAR technology will be used by Skyhawk to detect and build molecules for “certain neurological disease targets” by preclinical stage. After the preclinical stage, Takeda will take over clinical development and commercialization.

Takeda has picked up the global rights to create and commercialize drugs against numerous targets, while Skyhawk gets the customary upfront fee and potential milestones and royalties down the line. Both the companies are yet to disclose the figures.

The deal will mark the fourth industry collaboration for Massachusetts-based company Waltham. Earlier, Skyhawk had signed a partnership with Celgene worth $60 million. Under the deal, the BigBiotech could license up to 5 new drug candidates. At that time, Skyhawk also had raised $40 million in common stock’s new funding round. The biotech had anticipated that $100 million would boost its first cancer drug to the clinic, separately from the partnership with Celgene, in the year 2019.

The Celgene deal was signed after $74 million agreement finalized in January with Biogen focused on developing medicines for spinal muscular atrophy, multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases. Skyhawk has partners such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Lakepharma, MIT and ETH Zurich, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Skyhawk’s SkySTAR (Small molecule Therapeutics for Alternative splicing of RNA) tech has been created to target RNA’s specific blinding pocket regions. These sites could be taken off during vital steps in the RNA splicing procedure, causing mis-splicing. The company anticipates that rearranging this skipping can treat the basic causes of numerous diseases.

For the record, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd is the Asia’s leading pharma company. The company is focused on gastroenterology, metabolic disorders, inflammation, neurology, and oncology.

Source Credit:  https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/takeda-taps-skyhawk-s-rna-targeting-tech-for-neurodegenerative-disease