Takeda is walking away from the last target in a collaboration with Wave Life Sciences into which the Japanese pharma has already sunk $260 million over the past six years. The decision leaves Wave holding a Huntington’s disease program that it says has caught the attention of other drug developers.
Wave reported phase 1b/2a data on the Huntington’s candidate WVE-003 in June. The study linked 28 weeks of treatment with the antisense oligonucleotide to a significant reduction in mutant huntingtin, which drives the disease, and the preservation of the healthy, wild-type form of the protein. Wave sent the data to Takeda to allow the Tokyo-based drugmaker to assess whether to opt-in to the program.
Takeda reached its decision late last week. In a notice published Tuesday, Wave said Takeda was turning down its option. As WVE-003 was the last program standing in a once-wider collaboration, the decision brought the curtain down on the alliance.
Takeda originally paid $110 million to partner with Wave back in 2018, as part of a deal that also featured a $60 million equity investment and the same again in R&D funding.
The decision deprives Wave of further paydays from Takeda, which said it would “rigorously prioritize” its R&D pipeline in May. But the biotech has talked up interest from other potential partners, suggesting it could land a new deal for the asset as it gauges regulators' willingness for a potential path to accelerated approval.
On an earnings call in August, Wave CEO Paul Bolno, M.D., fielded a question about what he would do if Takeda exited the deal. Bolno called Takeda a “wonderful partner” but said Wave’s talks with the Japanese pharma company were advancing in parallel to discussions with other organizations.
“We've had inbound interest and questions from other strategics asking whether or not Takeda is planning on opting in on these datasets, and whether or not we'd be interested in having conversations,” Bolno said. “Given that these datasets are publicly disclosed, we are allowed to have discussions with others relative to the [Huntington’s] space.”
The discussions had included talks with “folks who want to potentially fund the asset,” Bolno said. Wave reiterated the point in its notice about Takeda’s decision, saying that its data “has generated significant interest from prospective partners.” The biotech used the termination notice to talk up the commercial opportunity for WVE-003, which it values at $5 billion.