BRIEF—Exelixis and STORM to target ADAR1 in cancer

Exelixis and STORM Therapeutics have entered into an exclusive collaboration and license agreement to discover and develop novel ADAR1-targeting candidates.

STORM brings to the table its proprietary RNA epigenetic platform, while Exelixis will pay an upfront fee of $17 million and provide funding for discovery research activities, focusing on two candidates initially.

If all goes well, Exelixis will be solely responsible for global development, manufacturing and commercialization, and storm will be eligible for development, regulatory and commercialization milestones, plus royalties on sales.

Exelixis chief scientific officer Peter Lamb said: “ADAR1 holds tremendous promise as a novel target for cancer. However, discovery efforts to identify ADAR1 inhibitors have remained a challenge, notably the development of rigorous, relevant assays to support small molecule drug discovery.”

He added: “STORM has extensive expertise in RNA-modifying enzymes and has successfully developed advanced mass spectrometry-based high-throughput screening assays and implemented a suite of technologies to enable the discovery of ADAR1 inhibitors.”