Wave Life Sciences Highlights Progress on Hepatic Collaboration with Pfizer

Wave Life Sciences (NASDAQ:WVE), a biotechnology company focused on delivering transformational therapies for patients with serious, genetically-defined diseases, today announced that Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) recently nominated the fourth and fifth final hepatic targets under the collaboration agreement between the two companies to develop genetically targeted therapies for the treatment of metabolic hepatic diseases, such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Upon payment of nomination fees, Pfizer had the right to select a maximum of five targets to advance from discovery through candidate selection with Wave.

As quoted in the press release:

Over the past two years, Wave and Pfizer have been collaborating to advance genetically defined targets for the treatment of metabolic hepatic diseases, bringing together Wave’s stereochemistry platform across antisense and single-stranded RNAi modalities, along with GalNAc and Pfizer’s hepatic targeting technology for delivery to the liver. Two targets, including apolipoprotein C-III, were declared upon commencement of the collaboration in May 2016. In August 2016, Pfizer nominated its third target. Once candidates have been developed, Pfizer may elect to exclusively license the programs and undertake further development and potential commercialization.

“The designation of these final two targets marks another milestone in a highly productive collaboration in which we have further established the benefits and versatility of our stereochemistry platform while making meaningful progress toward potentially addressing metabolic diseases of the liver,” said Paul Bolno, MD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer and President of Wave Life Sciences. “We look forward to continuing to advance all five programs and delivering differentiated stereopure candidates to our partners at Pfizer.”

Click here to read the full press release.