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Persistence Pays Off for Tacere Execs

 
• By Chris Morrison

RNAi firm Tacere's deal with Pfizer demonstrates pharmaceutical companies' interest in exploring a variety of RNA interference techniques as well as the rewards sometimes associated with the dogged development of a single project.

It isn’t uncommon for a drug candidate to outlive the company that first sought to develop it. But the tortuous path of the preclinical RNA interference candidate against hepatitis C virus (HCV), TT-033, is nevertheless an interesting study in perseverance. Tacere Therapeutics Inc. licensed the candidate to Pfizer Inc. for up to $145 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestones (including an undisclosed up-front fee) plus royalties, in January. [See Deal] The deal isn’t flashy or groundbreaking in its size, scope or structure, but for a project with three corporate homes before it even completes preclinical toxicology, it’s quite a good result. And it may also be a harbinger of changing pharmaceutical attitudes to viral delivery of oligonucleotide drugs.

Sara Cunningham Hall was co-founder and VP of business development at Avocel when that California biotech was acquired by

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