Press Release
January 4, 2019

Skyhawk Therapeutics and Biogen Agree on Collaboration to Develop Novel Small Molecule RNA Splicing Modifiers for Neurological Disease Targets

The Life Sciences team advised Skyhawk Therapeutics on its strategic collaboration agreement with Biogen in which the companies will leverage Skyhawk’s SkySTAR™ technology platform with the goal of discovering innovative small molecule treatments for patients with neurological diseases. Biogen will have the option to license therapies resulting from the collaboration and will be responsible for their development and potential commercialization.

Under the terms of the agreement, Skyhawk received an upfront payment of $74 million from Biogen and may receive potential future milestone payments and royalties. A portion of the upfront payment will be allocated to future research services, with the remainder expensed in the first quarter of 2019 as research and development. The agreement also grants Biogen an exclusive license to worldwide intellectual property rights on research-stage therapeutic candidates for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and additional neurological disorders.

Skyhawk Therapeutics is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing therapies that use its novel SkySTAR™ (Skyhawk Small molecule Therapeutics for Alternative splicing of RNA) platform to build small molecule drugs that bring breakthrough treatments to patients.

The Goodwin team was led by partner Lawrence Wittenberg.

For additional information on the collaboration, please read the press release.