The Alnylam-Tekmira
dispute may not be over yet. After de facto losing in the trade secret litigation over SNALP delivery technology, $3B heavy weight Alnylam seems intent
on making life for Tekmira difficult and earn the milestones it is entitled to according to the settlement the hard way.
At least this is
how I interpret the disclosure in the 10-Q quarterly report filed today with
the SEC by Alnylam where the company discloses that it has entered into binding
arbitration with Tekmira over a $5M milestone payment related to liver cancer
candidate ALN-VSP02:
‘In addition, we recently initiated binding
arbitration proceedings to resolve a disagreement with Tekmira regarding the
achievement by Tekmira of a $5.0 million milestone payment under our
cross-license agreement relating to the manufacture of ALN-VSP clinical trial
material for use in China.’
As a reminder, Tekmira was to earn the
milestone for enabling Alnylam’s ALN-VSP partner Ascletis to enter clinical
development in China.
I do not wish to
speculate on the specifics of the dispute, but it is worth remembering that
Alnylam is heavily dependent on rapid clinical development of SNALP-enabled
ALN-TTR02 to support its valuation, especially since the GalNAc platform is
showing additional blemishes (ALN-AT3 delay; admission in the conference call of
certain side effects seen with ALN-TTRsc).
