SparingVision announces strategic collaboration with Intellia Therapeutics

London, 13 October 2020 – 4BIO Capital (“4BIO” or “the Group”), an international venture capital firm focused solely on the advanced therapies sector, announced today that its portfolio company SparingVision, a genomic medicine company developing vision saving treatments for ocular diseases, has announced today a strategic collaboration with Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTLA) (‘Intellia’), a leading clinical-stage genome editing company focused on developing curative therapeutics using CRISPR/Cas9 technology both in vivo and ex vivo.

The collaboration will see the two companies developing novel genomic medicines utilizing CRISPR/Cas9 technology for the treatment of ocular diseases. Intellia will grant SparingVision exclusive rights to Intellia’s proprietary in vivo CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing technology for up to three ocular targets addressing diseases with significant unmet medical need. SparingVision will lead and fund the preclinical and clinical development for the genome editing product candidates pursued under the collaboration. In addition, the parties will research and develop novel self-inactivating Adeno-associated viruses (‘AAV’) vectors and Lipid Nanoparticles (‘LNPs’) based approaches to address delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing reagents to the retina.

As part of the licensing agreement, Intellia will receive a 10% equity ownership stake in SparingVision. Intellia will also be eligible to receive certain development and commercial milestone payments (around $200 million per product) as well as royalties on potential future sales of products arising from the collaboration. In addition, Intellia may exercise an option to obtain the US commercialization rights for product candidates arising from two of three collaboration targets. For product candidates Intellia chooses to option, Intellia will pay an opt-in fee, reimburse certain costs, share in 50% of development costs and pay royalties to SparingVision on US sales. Intellia will also maintain the ability to leverage technology advances established under this collaboration for any targets outside the partnership.

Owen Smith, Investment Director at 4BIO Capital, commented: “Since 4BIO Capital led its last funding round, SparingVision has gone from strength to strength, really cementing its leading position in the genomic medicine space for ocular disease. Right from the start, SparingVision has been focused on in-licensing a novel genomic editing technology to complement its bold vision of bringing new treatments to the ocular space. This deal is a validator of the success of this strategy and a testament to Stephane and his team. We are excited to continue to support them on this next transformational stage of the Company’s journey.”

Stéphane Boissel, President and Chief Executive Officer of SparingVision, said: “SparingVision’s aim has always been to disrupt the ophthalmology field by using cutting-edge technologies to address areas of significant unmet need. This collaboration with Intellia marks a pivotal moment in this mission and is highly complementary to our already mature and growing pipeline of unique mutation-agnostic gene therapies. Intellia is the first company in history to present clinical data supporting precision editing of a disease-causing gene within the body following a single, systemic dose of CRISPR/Cas9 and we are honored to have been selected as a strategic partner. We look forward to working together with the shared goal of radically changing the treatment of blinding ocular diseases and are grateful to our investors for their continued support.”

Click here to read the full press release from Sparing Vision.