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Dive Brief:
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Vertex Pharmaceuticals has pulled out of a planned four-year collaboration with Verve Therapeutics, returning all rights to a preclinical gene editing program for liver disease.
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Verve announced the end of the partnership on Thursday along with its fourth quarter financial results and the retirement of its chief medical officer, Frederick Fiedorek. Vertex’s decision stemmed from “changing priorities within its development portfolio,” Verve said.
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Verve and Vertex signed the collaboration in July 2022 as Verve was riding high from a successful initial public offering the previous year. As part of the deal, Verve received $25 million in cash, a $35 million investment and reimbursement for research expenses. The agreement also included as much as $406 million in potential payments for reaching certain goals.
Dive Insight:
The end of the Vertex-Verve collaboration comes as investors are reevaluating once sky-high expectations for the gene editing industry as commercial realities set in. Shares of Verve and top companies in the field have dropped dramatically from highs reached in 2021. Verve’s stock topped $73 in September 2021; the company’s shares were little changed at $6.27 Thursday morning.
Verve’s main focus is cardiovascular disease, and it has three lead therapies outside of the liver disease program previously partnered with Vertex. Eli Lilly is working with Verve on VERVE-301, which is designed to turn off the LPA gene in the liver to reduce levels of blood lipoprotein (a), a risk factor for complications such as stroke.
Lilly also has the right to opt in to programs targeting the PCSK9 and ANGPTL3 genes to reduce cholesterol that are being tested in Phase 1 studies. Verve expects to have initial data on the PCSK9 program — with a gene editing therapy called VERVE-102 — in the second quarter. The company is looking for an answer from Lilly about opting into that program in the second half of this year.
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