Good and bad news for Idera Pharmaceuticals

Massachusetts-based Idera Pharmaceuticals has announced that it is losing one of its three key Big Pharma partners, Novartis, but is also extending a research collaboration deal with another, Merck & Co. Novartis had been funding research at Idera to develop drugs known as toll-like receptor-targeted compounds. These activate immune responses against asthma and allergies .

Novartis paid Idera a total of $6m over the course of the four-year collaboration, starting with a $4m upfront licence fee in 2005, which was followed by another $1m when the joint research venture was extended in 2007. Idera received a further $1m thanks to the initiation of the phase I clinical study of QAX935 (IMO 2134), which Novartis had singled out as a lead candidate; it treated asthma and allergies through intranasal delivery.

In March last year, the companies decided to keep working together until the end of the year. But now the research agreement is set to end in February 2010. At this point all rights to IMO2134 will revert to Idera with no financial obligations to Novartis, and Idera will also be free of any restrictions on its right to develop TLR compounds.