GSK and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals have announced that they have reached an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals to receive exclusive rights to its hepatitis B therapy, JNJ-3989.

The Johnson & Johnson company’s investigational hepatitis B virus-targeted small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) therapeutic was initially licensed by Janssen from Arrowhead in 2018.

Exclusive rights to the liver-targeted siRNA antiviral therapy will accelerate the expansion of GSK’s own hepatitis B treatment, bepirovirsen, which is currently in late-stage development, the company said.

Under the terms of the deal, GSK will pay upfront and potential milestone-based payments totalling $1bn to Janssen and Arrowhead to acquire exclusive rights and obligations under the current licence agreement between both companies.

Janssen will continue to be responsible for the ongoing clinical trials of JNJ-3989 at its own expense and GSK will be responsible for future development and commercialisation activities.

Additionally, tiered royalties on net dates pursuant to the original agreement will go to Arrowhead.

GSK intends to evaluate JNJ-3989 in combination with its investigational antisense oligonucleotide, bepirovirsen, for the treatment of adult non-cirrhotic patients with chronic hepatitis B on nucleos(t)ide analogue therapy.

JNJ-3839 has the potential to move into a phase 2 sequential regimen trial with GSK’s bepirovirsen in 2024.

Merck & Co – known as MSD outside the US and Canada – has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Caraway Therapeutics, with the deal being worth up to $610m.

The acquisition gives Merck access to the preclinical biopharma’s pipeline of small-molecule therapeutics for genetically defined neurodegenerative and rare diseases.

Mutations that impair cellular clearance pathways are associated with multiple neurodegenerative and rare diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders characterised by cognitive dysfunction, according to Caraway.

The company focuses on discovering small molecules that activate cellular recycling processes to clear toxic materials and defective cellular components by modulating lysosomal function.

George Addona, senior vice president, discovery, preclinical development and translational medicine at Merck Research Laboratories, said: “Caraway’s multidisciplinary approach has yielded important progress in evaluating novel mechanisms of modulation of lysosomal function with potential for the treatment of progressive neurodegenerative diseases.”

Though exact financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed, Merck will make an upfront payment and contingent milestone payments to Caraway.

Martin Williams, chief executive officer of Caraway Therapeutics, described the buyout as a “testament to the hard work and dedication of the Caraway team and [its] mission to develop therapeutics with the potential to alter the progression of devastating neurodegenerative diseases and help patients”.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted fast track designation to AviadoBio’s experiential dementia gene therapy and given clearance for the candidate to be studied in a subset of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients.

AVB-101 will now benefit from the FDA’s fast track process, which is designed to improve the efficiency of product development and accelerate the review of treatments for serious conditions.

FTD, a form of early-onset dementia, is the leading cause of dementia in people aged under 65 years and typically leads to death within seven to 13 years of symptom onset.

Genetic FTD cases account for about one-third of cases and are most frequently associated with autosomal dominant mutations in three genes, including the progranulin (GRN) gene.

The potential one-time therapy AVB-101 has been designed to halt disease progression by delivering a functional copy of GRN to restore levels of progranulin to areas of the brain affected by FTD.

The FDA and the European Commission both granted orphan designation to the candidate as a treatment for FTD in 2022, and AviadoBio recently announced that enrolment to its phase 1/2 of the candidate in patients with FTD-GRN had begun in Europe.