Continued focus on new licensing deals for CombiGene
CombiGene has published its interim report for the second quarter and substantial emphasis is on the new agreement with Spark concerning the epilepsy project CG01. The company is now focusing on finding a new partner for the project’s continued development, while striving to identify new academic collaborations or licensing deals.
– During the autumn, we will have access to important data from Spark, and then we can establish the strategy for the epilepsy project CG01, says CEO Peter Ekolind to BioStock.
Gene therapy company CombiGene’s primary focus is the development of the pain program COZY, which is being developed together with Danish Zyneyro. The goal of the project, which consists of a peptide treatment (COZY01) and a gene therapy (COZY02), is to develop an effective treatment for severe chronic nerve pain. This spring, COZY01 took an important step forward, read more here.
CombiGene has also developed the gene therapy asset CG01 for the treatment of patients with severe drug-resistant focal epilepsy who do not become seizure-free with today’s standard of care. The company has shown that CG01 has anti-seizure effects in preclinical studies, while data indicates that the gene therapy can be expressed in human brain tissue, which is a prerequisite for clinical treatment effect.
New agreement with Spark
The epilepsy project has previously been out-licensed to the American company Spark Therapeutics. At the beginning of 2024, CombiGene regained the global rights to CG01 after the collaboration agreement was terminated due to a strategic revision of Spark’s pipeline. Read more here.
In the interim report published at the end of last week, CEO Peter Ekolind sums up the company’s first six months this year, and comments on the plans for the continued development of CG01:
»The agreement with Spark is now in place, and I am very pleased with it. In short, this means that CombiGene gets access to the data that Spark has, and is still generating, in the epilepsy project CG01. The last important study is planned to be completed soon, and the data will be compiled in the fall. CombiGene will then be able to benefit from these study results, as well as the optimization of the AAV vector and other important rights, which will facilitate our search for a new collaboration partner for the project.«
Ekolind further notes that the agreement means that CombiGene has no financial counterclaims from Spark, i.e. it does not have to pay the counterparty anything until revenue is generated from a commercialised product.
Interview with CombiGene’s new Head of Research
During the year, Annika Ericsson, former Director Preclinical Development at the company, was appointed as the company’s new Chief Scientific Officer. Ericsson began her work by running the preclinical testing of CG01 and has since been project manager in several projects, including the COZY02 pain project. In May, BioStock had the opportunity to get to know Ericsson and learn more about her priorities and long-term goals. Ericsson then highlighted the company’s strengths:
– CombiGene needs to bring in new and exciting gene therapy projects and there will be a strong focus on that. Our team has an impressive capacity to drive projects forward with high competence in drug development and gene therapy, enabling us to take on almost any project. My goal is to actively advance our ongoing pain projects to license them out to a larger player. If we succeed with a new licensing agreement for CG01, I see that as a bonus.
Read the full interview here.
CombiGene’s interim report shows that these goals, and the business focus that Ericsson emphasizes, still apply. Firstly, they want to find a new partner for CG01 during the autumn and, secondly, identify projects or academic collaborations for in-licensing. The fact that the company had SEK 84 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the interim report should provide some leeway for realizing these plans.
Comments from the CEO
Commenting to BioStock regarding the company’s goals going forward, CEO Peter Ekolind says:
– During the autumn, we will have access to important data from Spark, and then we can establish the strategy for the epilepsy project CG01. In the case of the COZY program, there is a unique opportunity to help millions of people who are plagued by severe chronic pain. We hope to announce further progress on this program in the coming months.
The content of BioStock’s news and analyses is independent but the work of BioStock is to a certain degree financed by life science companies. The above article concerns a company from which BioStock has received financing.
