(Photo Courtesy: www.heartregistry.org.au)
The collaboration provides up to $200 million in equity investments, milestone payments, and R&D services through 2018.
MyoKardia is a privately-held US-company, leading the development of precision therapies for genetic heart disease.
The collaboration builds upon MyoKardia's pioneering science, which hopes to correct the disruptive effects that disease mutations have on heart muscle contraction.
The collaboration, representing one of the largest research and development commitments to genetic forms of cardiomyopathy, encompasses three MyoKardia programs.
Two of these programs are focused on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and the other is focused on dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).
In addition, Sanofi and MyoKardia will equally share development costs on the HCM programs following initial demonstration of efficacy in patients, with Sanofi fully covering the development costs of the DCM program.
The collaboration is an outgrowth of Sanofi's Sunrise initiative, a strategic partnership model that seeks to invest in early stage opportunities that align with Sanofi's expert development and commercialization abilities.
The commitment of resources from Sanofi will accelerate and broaden MyoKardia's basic disease research and will support the shared commitment of bringing desperately needed therapies to patients.
Within the collaboration, MyoKardia will drive research and worldwide development activities through early human efficacy studies.
Thereafter, MyoKardia will lead worldwide development and US commercial activities for the two HCM programs, where it has retained product rights.
Sanofi will lead global development and commercial activities for DCM where it has obtained worldwide rights, and ex-US regulatory and commercial activities to the two HCM programs where it has ex-US commercialization rights.
