The Burrill Report


GlaxoSmithKline is paying the drug discovery and development company Epizyme $20 million to deliver an undisclosed number of new small molecule drugs targeting cancer and other diseases. If medicines for all the collaboration’s targets are commercialized, Epizyme stands to capture $630 million in milestone payments.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts company is also eligible to earn double-digit royalties on net sales of products resulting from the alliance. GSK will fund Epizyme’s research through candidate selection, at which point the U.K. pharmaceutical will take over development and commercialization.

The deal leverages Epizyme’s proprietary drug discovery platform, a system focused on finding drugs that inhibit an important class of proteins that regulate gene expression called epigenetic enzymes. Epigenetic enzymes play a role in a variety of diseases including cancer, inflammatory conditions, metabolic disorders, and neurological and psychiatric diseases. Finding potent and selective small molecules that inhibit a particular family of those enzymes, histone methyltransferases, is what Epizyme’s platform is all about.

“Epizyme’s mission is to develop personalized therapeutics for genetically-defined patients based on our understanding of the driving role played by many HMTs in human disease. We are excited to be working with GSK. This collaboration validates our unique discovery platform and the targeted approach we bring to HMT therapeutics,” says Robert Gould, Epizyme’s CEO and president.

Prior to GSK’s investment, Epizyme’s major funding came from venture investors, including Bay City Capital, Amgen Ventures, Astellas Venture, MPM Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. It closed a $32 million series B round in October 2009, and added another $8 million from New Enterprise Associates in December 2009 for a total of $40 million. The company was also among those to win a Therapeutic Discovery Project in November 2010 and landed a $1 million investment from The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation in January.

Epizyme lists its most advanced programs as DOT1L for MLL re-arranged leukemia and EZH2 for the treatment of certain non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas and breast cancer subtypes. Both drugs were listed as unpartnered in January.




January 14, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-epizyme_and_gsk_to_pursue_cancer_other_diseases.html