Pfizer announced last week its decision to terminate a $70 million collaboration deal with Massachusetts-based Repligen Corporation for developing treatments for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
The partnership, signed in December 2012, gave Pfizer access to Repligen’s investigational treatment, RG3039, which works as an inhibitor of DcpS enzymes for improving motor skills as well as survival rates in SMA patients. There are currently no approved drugs for treating the rare disease.
The results from the Phase 1 clinical trial for RG3039 indicated that the treatment was ineffective in increasing SMN protein levels -- the deficiency of which is the main cause of the disease -- findings which could explain why Pfizer abandoned the partnership.
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