Evotec partners with Secarna to develop LNA drugs

Third generation Locked Nucleic Acids (LNAs) target pathogenic changes in gene expression. Secarna and Evotec have now formed a partnership aimed at jointly building a co-owned antisense drug pipeline that is based on Secarna’s proprietary LNAplus^TM platform, which encompasses multiple complex diseases. As a pilot the companies have kicked off a joint discovery and development programme against an undisclosed target mRNA. The companies didn’t publish financial details of their deal.

In November 2019, Secarna closed a financing round; in March the company announced a deal with Swedish Lipigon Pharmaceuticals AB in the field of cardiovascular diseases. However, to effectively advance its more than 15 preclinical compounds, the company needs huge financial resources and an excellent biopharma network.

The agreement of Evotec and Secarna could lay the foundation for a long-term collaboration spanning across a number of targets and indications. The first programme has been identified and the companies are now progressing towards the establishment of a pipeline of co-owned antisense oligonucleotide therapies. The partnership is aimed at licencing candidates to biopharmaceutical companies. Third generation LNAs offer a potent curative approach to switch off gene expression of single disease-underlying genes in the cell. Secarna uses bioinformatics (Oligofyer) to design candidates that specifically bind to the targeted RNA. Further pre-screening and selection helps speeding up the discovery and development process compared to conventional therapeutic approaches. Secarna’s platform and ASOs have previously been validated by numerous in-house projects as well as in several academic and industry collaborations.