Amgen and Arrakis Therapeutics Announce Partnership to Develop RNA-targeting Oral Drugs

January 12, 2022

The biotech startup Arrakis Therapeutics has partnered with Amgen in a research collaboration to develop oral drugs that target disease-related RNA. Arrakis will be payed $75 million for five initial drug discovery options, with billions of dollars on the table if the programs are successful. Amgen will lead preclinical and clinical development on promising drug candidates.

According to Adam Feuerstein in a Stat News article, “For Arrakis, the Amgen collaboration is the second deal struck with a large industry partner. In 2020, Roche paid $190 million upfront to license Arrakis’s RNA-targeting technology. On its own, Arrakis is working on programs, also still preclinical, that aim to develop oral drugs that interfere with the function of RNA, but don’t necessarily eliminate them.”