AstraZeneca has reached an agreement to collaborate with VaxEquity for the discovery, development and commercialisastion of the proprietary self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) therapeutics platform developed at Imperial College London. VaxEquity was founded by Imperial College London and Morningside in 2020.

The strategic, long-term research collaboration aims to optimise and validate VaxEquity’s saRNA platform and apply it to advance novel therapeutic programmes.

AstraZeneca will support VaxEquity with research and development funding and should AstraZeneca advance any of the research programmes into its pipeline, VaxEquity could receive development, approval and sales based milestones totalling up to $195 million and royalties in the mid-single digits per programme.

AstraZeneca has the option to collaborate with VaxEquity on up to 26 drug targets and will also make an investment in VaxEquity to further the development of the saRNA platform.

saRNA is a new platform for the development of medicines and vaccines which uses similar technology to mRNA but with the added ability to self-amplify, thereby expressing proteins for longer, resulting in higher protein levels per dose level. This has the potential to allow saRNAs to be delivered at lower concentrations than conventional mRNA therapeutics, leading to less frequent or lower dosing, lower costs and a much broader range of potential applications.