Saniona achieves milestone with Boehringer Ingelheim
Saniona’s collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim has advanced to the lead optimization stage, triggering a 500,000 Euro research milestone payment to Saniona. The partnership aims to address the cognitive impairments associated with schizophrenia, a critical aspect of the disorder that profoundly affects patients’ daily lives.
Saniona has undergone a substantial transformation since its foundation thirteen years ago. In its early years, Saniona operated as a research-focused biotech with a business strategy anchored on forming strategic partnerships. As new programs were initiated and compounds discovered, the company actively pursued collaborations to drive development, generating revenue through milestone payments and potential royalties.
Collaboration to yield future revenues
During these formative years, Saniona secured key out-licensing agreements and partnerships with major players such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, providing essential operations funding. In later years, the company formed alliances with Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, Janssen, AstronauTx, and Proximagen.
Forging partnerships to yield future revenue streams is still a core part of the business strategy. However, Saniona is now a clinical-stage company with a broad pipeline of drug candidates targeting epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
Collaborating with Boehringer in schizophrenia
Saniona and Boehringer Ingelheim first partnered in 2016 to develop new therapeutics for schizophrenia. Building on this foundation, four years later, the parties established a new research collaboration in the same area, continuing their focus on the disorder.
The objective of this new endeavour is to identify new treatment options for schizophrenia by exploring a novel undisclosed CNS ion channel target using Saniona’s ion channel drug discovery platform.
Under the agreement, Boehringer Ingelheim holds exclusive worldwide rights to research, develop, manufacture, and commercialize the therapeutics resulting from the collaboration. Saniona is eligible to receive up to €76.5 million in milestone payments and royalties on global net sales.
The collaboration has reached a milestone
Yesterday, Saniona announced that the ongoing ion channel research collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim has advanced to the lead optimization stage, resulting in a research milestone payment of 500,000 Euro (approximately 5.7 million SEK).
Reflecting on the progress, Palle Christophersen, Senior VP of Research at Saniona, said:
“Our advancing program underscores the productive collaboration between the Saniona and Boehringer Ingelheim teams. We are excited to continue our joint efforts in developing novel ion channel modulators aimed at addressing cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia, an aspect of the disease that severely impacts patients’ daily lives. By furthering our efforts, we are one step closer to potentially pioneering a first-in-class therapeutic approach for this unmet medical need.”
In a comment to BioStock, Saniona’s CEO Thomas Feldthus says:
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.“This collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim was first conceived during another partnership between our teams. I’m thrilled that the teams from Boehringer Ingelheim and Saniona have advanced the program from its early conceptual phase to lead optimization, and I look forward to following their progress. Forming productive collaborations remains key to our strategy, including early-stage research like the one with Boehringer Ingelheim. However, we are now focusing on partnerships around our pipeline programs, where payments to Saniona are expected to be more substantial.”