Milestone payments for Epizyme and Antares Pharma

Privately-held US biotech startup Epizyme says it has received a$4 million in milestone payments from UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) based on the achievement of preclinical milestones. Last year, Epizyme and GSK formed a worldwide strategic alliance to discover, develop, and market novel small molecule therapeutics targeting histone methyltransferases (HMTs), an important class of epigenetic enzymes, for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, worth a potential $650 million to the US firm (The Pharma Letter January 11, 2011).

"This achievement reflects the rapid continued progress of our alliance with GSK and the power of Epizyme's platform to create small molecule histone methyltransferase inhibitors (HMTi) as personalized therapeutics for patients with genetically defined diseases," said Robert Copeland, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Epizyme.

Jason Rhodes, executive vice president and chief business officer, adding: "Since January 2011, we have entered into benchmark alliances with GSK, Eisai and Celgene that together have brought in $140 million in cash, with future committed research funding and expected milestones. Importantly, Epizyme retains significant US rights to our lead DOT1L and EZH2 programs, which are partnered with Celgene and Eisai, respectively, in addition to our pipeline of unpartnered programs."