Collaboration and partnerships Exploring why companies partner their technology

In September 2021 we announced a global licensing and research collaboration with Lilly and Company. The partnership focuses on developing potential medicines using our Axiomer^® RNA editing platform technology. Strategic collaborations like this can help to drive the advancement of an early-stage technology, like Axiomer, closer to the clinic.

In any global licensing and research collaboration the goal is to progress new medicine technology towards clinical development and, ultimately, to patients via commercialization. Biotech companies, like ProQR, have very specialized and deep expertise, which can be attractive to larger pharma as they seek to use new technologies to develop potential medicines. And biotechs like ProQR can benefit from the resources and knowledge of large pharma as they work together to drive early-stage discoveries to the clinic and ultimately patients.

Collaboration in science is key. It leads to success across the community. Collaboration in science means ProQRians can share their findings, data, and hypotheses with others, building on work in the wider scientific field. By gaining this greater understanding, we can drive higher standards of RNA-editing, medicinal application, and effectiveness of our technology.

Finding a beneficial partnership can allow companies to drive forward the development of technologies, providing vital advances into diseases of which there are little to no treatment options.

ProQR’s Axiomer^® platform technology enables the specific editing of single nucleotides in RNA. Axiomer editing oligonucleotides are designed to recruit and direct endogenously expressed ADAR enzymes (Adenosine Deaminases Acting on RNA) to change an Adenosine (A) to an Inosine (I) in the RNA.

An Inosine is translated as a Guanosine (G) correcting an RNA with a disease-causing mutation back to a normal (wild type) RNA, modulating protein expression, or altering a protein so that it will have a new function that helps prevent or treat disease. Our ambition is to leave no disease behind, but we know we will need partners along the way.

Entering a partnership can have many benefits for companies like ProQR. These include the sharing of different ideas, perspectives, as well as combining different technologies. Ultimately this is to create an environment in which innovative treatments can be discovered and brought to communities of high unmet need as efficiently as possible.