NEW YORK – Eli Lilly subsidiary Prevail Therapeutics has ended a collaboration with Precision BioSciences and will return three gene therapy development programs to the company, Precision said Tuesday.
Durham, North Carolina-based Precision said it exercised an option to regain rights for the three in vivo gene-editing programs currently in preclinical development and that used its ARCUS gene-editing technology. The collaboration included a Duchenne muscular dystrophy candidate and other undisclosed programs.
The companies originally struck a development and license agreement in 2021 and last year amended it to transfer certain preclinical research, manufacturing, and investigational new drug (IND)-enabling activities from Precision to Prevail. As part of the agreement, Precision was eligible to receive milestone payments of up to $395 million per licensed product.
"We enjoyed a productive gene editing collaboration with Prevail Therapeutics and appreciate their contributions to the success of these programs," Precision President and CEO Michael Amoroso said in a statement. "Together, we advanced three programs from concept toward clinical candidates."
Precision said it will now develop the three programs independently or with new partners and prepare for toxicology studies as the next step in advancing these agents toward clinical testing.
Precision said this announcement does not affect its existing near-term clinical priorities in hepatitis B and primary mitochondrial myopathy or its expected cash runway into 2026. The company in February had said it would file an IND application in the US or a clinical trial application in Europe this year seeking permission to take its gene-editing candidate for chronic hepatitis B into human studies.