Biogen exercises option with Ionis to develop synthetic nucleotides for spinal muscular atrophy
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Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IONS)
announce that Biogen has exercised its option to obtain a worldwide, exclusive, royalty-bearing license from Ionis to develop and commercialize BIIB115/ION306.
As a part of the option exercise, Biogen made a one-time $60M payment to Ionis in Q4 2021. Future payments may include potential milestone payments and royalties on annual worldwide net sales.

Biogen will be solely responsible for the costs and expenses related to the development, manufacturing and commercialization of BIIB115 following the option exercise.
BIIB115 is an investigational antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) in development for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), characterized by loss of motor neurons in the spinal cord and lower brain stem, resulting in severe and progressive muscular atrophy.
Biogen plans to advance BIIB115 to clinical trials to investigate safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and efficacy.