Cyclerion Therapeutics Announces Global Licensing Agreement With Akebia Therapeutics


Cyclerion Therapeutics, Inc. recently announced it has entered into an exclusive, global license agreement with Akebia Therapeutics, Inc., a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on kidney disease, for the development and commercialization of praliciguat, an oral sGC stimulator.

Under the terms of the agreement, Akebia has obtained an exclusive license to research, develop and commercialize praliciguat globally and will be solely responsible for these activities going forward. Cyclerion is eligible to receive up to $225 million in precommercial milestones, including up to $15 million in the first 18 months. Total potential future development, regulatory, and commercialization milestone payments could result in up to $585 million. Cyclerion is also eligible to receive tiered, sales-based royalties ranging from single-digit to high-teen percentages.

“We are very pleased to license praliciguat to Akebia, whose demonstrated leadership in kidney disease and extensive R&D and commercialization capabilities make it an ideal partner for the future development of praliciguat. This transaction provides Cyclerion with meaningful participation in any potential near and longer-term value creation and enables us to focus on our mission to develop treatments for cognitive impairment, including our foundational assets CY6463 and CY3018, where we see enormous clinical promise,” said Peter Hecht, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Cyclerion.

“We are pleased to expand our clinical development pipeline with the in-licensing of praliciguat, which is highly complementary of our strategy to identify and efficiently develop novel therapeutics for people impacted by kidney disease,” said John P. Butler, Chief Executive Officer of Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. “We look forward to leveraging our capabilities to explore development and commercialization of praliciguat.”

Cyclerion Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company on a mission to develop treatments that restore cognitive function. Cyclerion is advancing novel, first-in-class, CNS-penetrant, sGC stimulators that modulate a key node in a fundamental CNS signaling pathway. The multidimensional pharmacology elicited by the stimulation of sGC has the potential to impact a broad range of CNS diseases. The most advanced compound, CY6463, has shown rapid improvement in biomarkers associated with cognitive function and is currently in clinical development for Alzheimer’s Disease with Vascular pathology (ADv), Mitochondrial Encephalomyopathy, Lactic Acidosis and Stroke-like episodes (MELAS), and Cognitive Impairment Associated with Schizophrenia (CIAS). Cyclerion is also advancing CY3018, a next-generation sGC stimulator. For more information, visit https://www.cyclerion.com.