Business & Tech

Carlsbad's Isis Pharmaceuticals Teams Up with Swiss Company to Fight Huntington's Disease

So far, no effective treatments exist for Huntington's disease which results in the progressive loss of mental faculties and physical control.

Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Carlsbad and the Swiss research firm Roche announced Monday a partnership to fight Huntington's disease, a debilitating genetic brain disorder.

Roche will pay Isis $30 million up front and as much as $362 million in licensing and milestone payments, plus royalties, according to the companies.

Roche and Isis employees will work together to develop treatments based on an Isis drug that blocks production of a protein that leads to the illness. Roche brings to the partnership a technology called "brain shuttle'' that helps transport medications through the central nervous system.

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"We believe that Roche's expertise in developing (central nervous system) drugs, along with their clinical development experience, will greatly enhance our development efforts for this program and allow us to move forward more rapidly,'' said Lynne Parshall, Isis' chief executive. "In addition, by utilizing Roche's brain shuttle technology with our antisense drug discovery capabilities, we have the potential to significantly improve the therapeutic potential for this program.''

According to Isis, Huntington's disease symptoms usually appear between the ages of 30 to 50 and worsen over a 10- to 25-year period. Weakened patients usually die of pneumonia, heart failure or other complications. 

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–City News Service


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