BY Richard Summerfield
Private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc is to invest $2bn in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals through an equity-and-debt deal, the firms announced on Monday.
Under the terms of the deal, Blackstone will acquire $100m in Alnylam stock and pay $1bn for 50 percent of Alnylam’s royalties and commercial milestones for inclisiran. The drugmaker could pick up another $150m from Blackstone Life Sciences for its cardiometabolic programmes vutrisiran and ALN-AGT, as well as a loan worth up to $750m.
“Alnylam is focused on building a top-tier biopharmaceutical company, advancing RNAi therapeutics as a whole new class of medicines with transformative potential for patients around the world,” said John Maraganore, chief executive of Alnylam. “This exciting new relationship with Blackstone brings us much closer to that goal, securing our bridge towards a self-sustainable financial profile that we believe can now be achieved without any need for Alnylam to access the equity markets in the future.”
He continued: “A central component of this strategic relationship is a partial monetization of our royalty for inclisiran. If approved, we believe this therapy holds enormous promise as a potential game-changer in hypercholesterolemia management. We are pleased to retain half of the royalties we receive from Novartis, allowing Alnylam to benefit from inclisiran’s anticipated future success. We couldn’t be more pleased to enter into this highly innovative arrangement with Blackstone, which has shown a significant commitment to Alnylam’s future and alignment with our long-term vision.”
“Blackstone is uniquely positioned to provide customized, one-stop-shop financing solutions at scale while establishing development collaborations with the world’s leading biotech companies,” said Nicholas Galakatos, global head of Blackstone Life Sciences. “Alnylam’s RNAi technology represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug development today, and aligns perfectly with our investment strategy.
“Our collaboration with Alnylam provides non-dilutive access to capital to advance important new medicines in development across several disease indications including heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S. and globally,” he added.
Alnylam had been in talks with several buyers to sell its royalty rights for its cholesterol therapy inclisiran months before the global COVID-19 outbreak.
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