RE: AZN & other Pharma's1 May 2020 16:11
As I alluded to in my 13:58 post big money can be paid for pre clinical / discovery stage assets and SNG is already ahead on the curve in that sense with SG016.
Examples:
In the gene therapy field, Neurocrine Biosciences signed a deal potentially worth $1.8 billion—including a $165 million upfront payment—with Voyager Therapeutics to acquire development and com- mercialization rights to four gene therapy programs. The deal includes VY-AADC, a phase 2 asset for Parkinson disease, and VY-FXN01, which is in preclinical development for Friedreich ataxia. Both gene therapies are based on the AAV platform.
Finally, another notable trend was that the majority of the top deals concentrated on preclinical or discovery-stage assets (60%), indicating the continuing importance of early access to innovation. Among those in Figure 2, a notable example is Genentech’s deal with SkyHawk signed in July. Potentially worth more than $2 billion, it involves the application of SkyHawk’s platform to identify compounds that target RNA, an emerging area of small-molecule drug discovery that has provided the basis for several companies to be formed in recent years.