Nationwide Children’s Hospital spinout Celenex could fetch as much as $452m upon completion of milestones after progressing rare disease therapies conceived at the hospital’s collaborative program with Ohio State University.
Celenex, a US-based gene therapy developer spun out of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, was acquired by rare disease treatment developer Amicus Therapeutics today for an upfront cash consideration of $100m.
The spinout’s investors could receive up to $15m on the fulfilment of development milestones and up to $337m for certain regulatory and sales milestones, though Amicus expects to pay $75m at most over the next four years.
Through the acquisition, Amicus has bought development and commercial rights to ten gene therapy programs started at Center for Gene Therapy, part of research institute OSU Center for Clinical Translational Science (CCTS), itself a collaboration between Nationwide Children’s and Ohio State University.
The programs include Celenex’s lead therapies targeting the CLN6, CLN3, and CLN8 subtypes of Batten disease, a rare and fatal inherited disorder of the central nervous system (CNS) that often presents symptoms from early childhood.
The drugs are…
