GSK and Adrestia and Enter into Precision Medicine Discovery Collaboration

Rare Daily Staff

GlaxoSmithKline and Adrestia Therapeutics entered into a multi-year agreement on up to five strategic, collaborative projects using cutting edge molecular biology to develop precision medicines.

In addition, GSK and Ahren Innovation Capital are co-leading a series A investment in UK-based Adrestia.

The collaboration will combine Adrestia’s world leading, synthetic viability platform with GSK’s deep scientific expertise in human genetics, functional genomics, screening, and bioinformatics.

Under the terms of their agreement, Adrestia will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, and will be eligible to receive up to $230 million (£172 million) from each project in post-option milestone payments, plus royalties, subject to development and commercialization progress, across multiple arising products.

“Adrestia’s vision is to use knowledge of human disease genetics to develop innovative new medicines for rare and common diseases,” said Steve Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Adrestia.

Genetic, environmental, or other factors cause imbalances in physiological processes and pathways, leading to disease. Adrestia has developed a Disease Rebalancing Platform that uses cutting edge molecular biology to restore the biological balance in diseased or dying cells, a concept coined “synthetic viability.” Adrestia’s platform can be applied to diverse therapeutic areas, which are caused by faulty molecular pathways that lead to cellular dysfunction or death. Through this approach and bolstered by the strategic collaboration with GSK, Adrestia will use precision genetic models to search for therapeutic targets, precision diagnostics, novel drug compounds and new applications for existing drugs.

“Adrestia has shown that synthetic viability can rescue diseased or dying cells, and is a natural extension of our shown that synthetic viability can rescue diseased or dying cells, and is a natural extension of our work with synthetic lethality to find novel medicines,” said Tony Wood, senior vice president, Medicinal Science and Technology at GSK. “This collaboration combines the talent and passion of both companies to put the UK at the cutting-edge of this approach to drug discovery.”

Photo: Steve Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Adrestia