CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Angelini Pharma and Quiver Bioscience have entered into a multi-year research collaboration and licensing agreement aimed at discovering and advancing new therapies for genetic epilepsies, the companies announced.
Under the agreement, Angelini Pharma will gain exclusive global license rights to future drug targets identified through the collaboration. Quiver Bioscience will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and research support, and is eligible for milestone payments of up to $120 million, along with royalties tied to the development and commercialization of therapies selected by Angelini.
The collaboration brings together Quiver’s drug discovery platform, data assets, and artificial intelligence models with Angelini Pharma’s experience in brain health and epilepsy drug development. The companies said the effort will focus on generating new insights into Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathies, a group of rare, genetically driven neurological disorders that often begin in childhood and are marked by severe, treatment-resistant seizures.
“The prospects of our collaboration with Quiver Bioscience are very promising,” said Rafal Kaminski, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer at Angelini Pharma. “The aim is to generate novel scientific insights on a scale and richness that has been unprecedented in this area of research. By applying cutting-edge technologies and advanced data analytics approaches, including AI, this partnership will generate a unique data set to inform the development of novel therapies in the future.”
Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathies are linked to gene mutations, but the functional and molecular effects of those mutations are often poorly understood. While new treatments have emerged in recent years for certain forms of the disease, companies involved in the collaboration said significant unmet medical need remains.
Quiver’s platform uses human neuronal models combined with single-cell transcriptomics, optical electrophysiology, and AI-driven analysis to connect genetic mutations with functional changes in neurons. The companies said the goal of the partnership is to identify and develop differentiated therapies that could address multiple forms of these rare epilepsies.
“We’re excited to embark on this collaboration with the excellent team at Angelini Pharma,” said Graham T. Dempsey, PhD, co-founder and chief executive officer of Quiver Bioscience. “Together we are pursuing a novel approach uniquely enabled by Quiver’s technology platform. By leveraging altered electrophysiology in response to genetic perturbations as the core neuronal classifier and integrating paired multi-modal data, we aim to link functional phenotypes with the underlying molecular drivers. We look forward to translating this science into new medicines for a disease area in urgent need of innovation.”
Sergio Marullo di Condojanni, chief executive officer of Angelini Pharma, said the agreement aligns with the company’s broader strategy to expand its brain health portfolio.
“This new partnership is another step forward to advance our strategic priorities, strengthen our global presence and potentially expand our pipeline of innovative medicines and promising candidates,” he said. “It follows a number of strategic acquisitions and collaboration agreements that we have entered over the course of the past two years and will further boost our leadership and portfolio in brain health.”
Destum Partners served as transaction advisor to Quiver Bioscience.
