Ionis Pharma earns $10 million from Janssen on licensing of IONIS-JBI1-2.5Rx

Ionis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: IONS) said today that it has earned $10 million from Janssen Biotech upon licensing IONIS-JBI1-2.5Rx, an orally delivered antisense drug designed to locally inhibit an undisclosed target in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract for the treatment of a GI autoimmune disease.

Janssen, a subsidiary of US health care giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), will assume all global development, regulatory and commercialization responsibilities for IONIS-JBI1-2.5Rx once Ionis completes the IND-enabling studies. The milestone payment comes as part of a deal that Janssen signed with Isis Pharmaceuticals, which is what Ionis was previously called, in January 2015, worth a potential $835 million.

"IONIS-JBI1-2.5Rx is the first antisense drug to enter development as part of Ionis' collaboration with Janssen to discover and develop orally administered, locally acting RNA-targeted therapeutics for autoimmune diseases in the gastrointestinal tract.  We are very pleased to have rapidly advanced this first drug candidate into development within a year and a half of initiating our collaboration with Janssen," said B Lynne Parshall, chief operating officer at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, adding: "This new drug further expands our technology's reach into a new therapeutic setting and a new route of delivery."