Benzinga | Jan 5, 2021 07:33AM EST

Dicerna Announces Novo Nordisk's Nomination Of First Candidate For Development Under RNAi Discovery And Development Agreement And Additional Milestone Achievement

First Development Candidate Selected Under Multi-Target Collaboration Will Be Evaluated for Treatment of Cardiometabolic Diseases and Triggers $2.5 Million Milestone to Dicerna --

-- Dicerna Also Earned $25 Million Annual Fee for Delivery of Multiple GalXC(tm) RNAi Molecules in 2020 --

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:DRNA) (the "Company" or "Dicerna"), a leading developer of investigational ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) therapeutics, today announced Novo Nordisk A/S ("Novo") has nominated its first candidate under the existing agreement between the two companies for the discovery and development of novel therapies for the treatment of liver-related cardiometabolic diseases using Dicerna's proprietary GalXC(tm) RNAi platform technology.

"The past 12 months since closing our agreement with Novo have been extremely productive, with the identification and validation of multiple candidates under this highly collaborative relationship," said Bob D. Brown, Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development at Dicerna. "That we have so quickly reached this first candidate selection milestone is a testament to the efficiency of both the Dicerna team and our technology platform, and to the clear, constructive communications between our organizations. The work invested to date has helped build an effective foundation for our partnership to generate and advance multiple new GalXC candidates over the coming years."

"Our collaboration with Dicerna has progressed very well in its first year," said Marcus Schindler, Senior Vice President of Global Drug Discovery at Novo Nordisk. "We are very pleased to have already nominated the first GalXC RNAi candidate for IND-enabling studies in cardiometabolic diseases -- and I am confident many more will follow, as we continue to create synergies between the Dicerna team and our disease area experts."

Under the agreement, Dicerna is eligible to receive $25 million annually for each of the first three years contingent on delivering to Novo RNAi molecules for a defined number of targets. Dicerna met this obligation in 2020. In addition, Dicerna earned a $2.5 million milestone in December 2020 associated with nomination of the first development candidate.

The collaboration between Novo and Dicerna, which closed in late December 2019, encompasses the exploration of more than 30 liver cell targets with the potential to deliver multiple clinical candidates for disorders including chronic liver disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), type 2 diabetes, obesity and rare diseases. Dicerna is conducting discovery and preclinical development up to candidate selection for each liver cell target, and Novo is responsible for further development.

The agreement enables each company to co-develop and co-commercialize product candidates discovered in the collaboration. Novo is leading programs targeting cardiometabolic disorders and other indications with Dicerna having the right to opt in to two programs during clinical development. Dicerna retains rights to initiate two new orphan liver disease programs for which Novo can opt in. For all co-development programs, the companies will share in the profit/loss of net sales of products consistent with each company's contribution to co-development costs. For programs to which Dicerna does not opt in, Dicerna is eligible to receive up to $357.5 million per target in development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on product sales ranging from the mid-single-digits to mid-teens.