Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
German pharma group Boehringer Ingelheim has struck an up to $1bn partnership with a UK biotech to develop treatments for chronic liver disease that aim to harness the organ’s capacity to regenerate.
Under the drug discovery partnership, Ochre Bio will receive an initial $35mn investment, rising to more than $1bn in royalties if treatments are successfully brought through clinical trials. It is a similar milestone-based structure to many partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry.
The liver is the only organ that can regrow and repair itself and Ochre Bio will seek to develop drugs that restore this ability in diseased livers.
The company’s work to date has involved analysing thousands of donated human livers to develop an understanding of the causes of disease, and studying whether making changes to RNA — a vital molecule for translating genetic information into proteins — can extend the lifespan of transplanted livers.
“What we’re trying to do is give the liver a little nudge in the right direction to support it to regenerate,” said Quin Wills, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Ochre Bio. “What happens in a cirrhotic liver is [cells] don’t have that decision-making process any more to start dividing and restoring capacity. By changing certain ‘switches’, using these RNA therapies, we help them make those decisions again.”
There have been a series of recent developments in the treatment of liver disease, which is the third-largest cause of early death in the UK and other high-income countries. It is also the largest killer of 35- to 49-year-olds in the UK, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first-ever drug designed specifically for the most common liver disease, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis or mash, developed by Madrigal Pharmaceuticals.
People with mash have a build-up of fat deposits in the liver and it is estimated to affect 115mn people worldwide. The approval of Madrigal’s drug should help other treatments to pass regulatory hurdles, according to analysts at investment bank William Blair.
The disease is often linked with weight gain and has become more common as obesity levels have risen.
Pharma groups are optimistic about the potential for new weight loss and diabetes drugs known as GLP-1s to treat liver diseases.
A weight-loss drug licensed by Boehringer Ingelheim from Danish biotech Zealand Pharma has had positive results in liver disease trials, while Novo Nordisk is looking at the effect of its weight-loss drug Wegovy on mash.
But while these drugs could be used to treat early-stage disease, the industry thinks they will be less helpful against more advanced mash, which can involve extensive scarring or cirrhosis of the liver. New ways of tackling late-stage liver disease could delay the need for transplants, currently the only effective treatment.
Jack O’Meara, chief executive of Ochre Bio, told the Financial Times: “There still remains a huge unmet need there and we hope this partnership with Boehringer will be able to develop medicines that solve or offer solutions for patients at a later stage.”
Søren Tullin, head of cardiometabolic disease research at Boehringer Ingelheim, said Ochre Bio’s genomics experience and technology “holds the potential to uncover novel regenerative pathways that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of those affected by chronic liver disease”.
Read the full article here