October 5, 2022 – Voyager Therapeutics, a gene therapy and neuroscience company developing life-changing treatments and next-generation adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids, announced that Pfizer has exercised its option to license a novel capsid generated from Voyager’s TRACERTM capsid discovery platform to help enable a potential gene therapy program against an undisclosed rare neurologic disease target.
“Pfizer’s decision to exercise this option reflects the significant research progress our scientific teams have made and further validates the potential of our TRACER platform to help enable gene therapy for neurological diseases,” said Alfred Sandrock, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Voyager. “Collaborations, such as this Pfizer partnership, are a pillar of our two-pronged strategy to leverage our next-generation capsids both to help enable our partners’ gene therapy programs and to advance Voyager’s internal pipeline of highly differentiated candidates for GBA1 Parkinson’s disease, SOD1 ALS, and other neurological diseases.”
Under the terms of the license option agreement, originally announced in October 2021, Voyager previously received a $30 million upfront payment and is entitled to receive a $10 million option exercise payment. Voyager is eligible to receive potential future development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments of up to $115 million, sales milestones of up to $175 million, and mid- to high-single-digit tiered royalties in connection with Pfizer’s use of its capsid in development and commercialization of a gene therapy for a rare neurologic target.
“We are pleased with the progress made to date in our collaboration with Voyager and continue to be impressed with the potential of its TRACER platform to help enable next-generation AAV gene therapies,” said Seng H. Cheng, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Pfizer Rare Disease. “We are excited to move forward with our continued evaluation of this capsid and the role it could play in driving new therapeutic options for patients living with certain rare neurologic diseases.”