Sarepta Therapeutics

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SRPT) is a medical research and drug development company with corporate offices and research facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1980 as AntiVirals,[1] shortly before going public the company changed its name from AntiVirals to AVI BioPharma soon with stock symbol AVII and in July 2012 changed name from AVI BioPharma to Sarepta Therapeutics and SRPT respectively.[2] As of the end of 2019, the company has two approved drugs (see the Products section below).

Sarepta Therapeutics
Traded asNASDAQ: SRPT
Russell 1000 Index component
Industrypharmaceutical industry 
Founded1980 
Headquarters
Cambridge 
,
United States of America 
Key people
Douglas S. Ingram (CEO & President)
Revenue$301,034,000 (2018)
Websitewww.sarepta.com/ 

History

Sarepta started in Corvallis, Oregon on January 1, 1980 and was originally named Antivirals Inc.[3]. After occupying several research laboratory spaces in Corvallis the company opened a production laboratory in Corvallis in February 2002 and was renamed AVI BioPharma Inc.[4] The company made headlines in 2003 when it announced work on treatments for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the West Nile virus.[4][5] In July 2009, the company announced they would move their headquarters from Portland, Oregon, north to Bothell, Washington, near Seattle.[6] At that time the company led by president and CEO Leslie Hudson had 83 employees and quarterly revenues of $3.2 million.[6] AVI had yet to turn a profit and had not yet developed any commercial products as of July 2009.[6] The company lost $19.7 million in the second quarter of 2009,[7] and then won an $11.5 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Threat Reduction Agency in October 2009.[8] By this time the company had completed its headquarters move to Bothell.[6][8]

In 2012 the company moved a second time, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the time, CEO Chris Garabedian indicated the move was motivated by the need to recruit expertise in rare diseases.[9] The Corvallis laboratory facility was closed in 2016.

In February, Sarepta acquired five gene therapy candidates for $165 million after one of them, MYO-101, produced results with a new gene therapy candidate for patients with Limb-Girdle muscular dystrophy; two months after receiving a single treatment, muscles from all three patients were producing the protein they couldn't make on their own.[10]

Products

Its primary products are Morpholino oligomers (PMOs), synthetic nucleic acid analogs that were conceived of by James Summerton and invented by Summerton with Dwight Weller, originally developed under the name NeuGene Antisense. Since morpholino oligomers can form sequence-specific double-stranded complexes with RNA they are suitable use in antisense therapy. In one application, translation blocking, a morpholino oligomer binds to messenger RNA produced by a known disease-causing gene to prevent it from being translated into protein. Morpholinos can also work as splice-switching oligos, targeting pre-mRNA to alter splicing and so causing changes in the structure of the mature mRNA (the mechanism of the approved drug eteplirsen). Morpholinos have been tested for a wide range of applications including prevention of cardiac restenosis after angioplasty, treatment of coronary artery bypass grafts, treatment of polycystic kidney disease, redirection of drug metabolism, treatment of some mutations causing Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and inhibition of infectious diseases. Their greatest clinical & commercial success thus far has been in treatment of DMD. A new class of Morpholino oligos, the peptide-linked Morpholinos or PPMO, are linked to an arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptide to enhance their delivery into cells and have entered clinical trials[11]

The Morpholino drug eteplirsen, targeting exon 51 of the dystrophin mRNA, has been approved as a human therapeutic by the FDA in 2016[12] and clinical trials for Morpholinos targeting other exons are ongoing. Morpholinos have been used in preclinical studies to inhibit replication of a broad range of viruses, including influenza, West Nile virus, SARS, hepatitis C, dengue fever, Ebola and Calicivirus, all of which are single stranded RNA viruses. They are in advanced development for prevention and treatment of Ebola and Marburg viruses. In March 2013, the Company announced positive results from a non-human primate study of AVI-7288, the drug candidate for treatment of Marburg virus infection. The results showed that intramuscular administration of AVI-7288 resulted in survival rates up to 100 percent in monkeys exposed to this fatal virus. These results are similar to those in previous studies when the drug was given by intravenous injection.[13]

In December 2019 golodirsen (Vyondys 53) received FDA approval[14] for the treatment of cases that can benefit from skipping exon 53 of the dystrophin transcript.

In addition to development of Morpholinos as therapeutics, AVI has conducted six human trials for colorectal and pancreatic cancers using their cancer vaccine AVICINE.

See also

References
  1. Summerton, J (2005). "Morpholino Antisense Oligos: Applications in Biopharmaceutical Research". Innovations in Pharmaceutical Technology. No. Sept. Retrieved 29 Oct 2012. | archiveurl = http://www.gene-tools.com/sites/default/files/Summerton2005_IPT.pdf
  2. "AVI BioPharma changes name, splits stock". Portland Business Journal. July 12, 2012. Retrieved 17 July 2012.
  3. Summerton, James E. (2017). "Invention and Early History of Morpholinos". In Moulton, Hong; Moulton, Jon (eds.). Morpholino Oligomers. Methods in Molecular Biology. 1565. New York, NY USA: Humana Press. ISBN 978-1-4939-6815-2.
  4. Moody, Robin J. (November 5, 2003). "AVI BioPharma's losses shrinking". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  5. Moody, Robin J. (June 12, 2003). "AVI BioPharma stock reaches new 52-week high". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  6. DiMesio, Robbie (July 30, 2009). "AVI BioPharma moving HQ out of Oregon". The Oregonian. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  7. "AVI BioPharma loses $19.7M in Q2". Portland Business Journal. August 10, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  8. "AVI BioPharma gets $11.5M military contract". Portland Business Journal. October 5, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  9. Timmerman, Luke. Sarepta Moves From Seattle to Boston for the Talent. 7 September 2012.
  10. Renauer, Cory (2019-03-26). "Is Sarepta Therapeutics a Good Gene Therapy Stock to Buy Now? -". The Motley Fool. Retrieved 2019-05-21.
  11. "A Study to Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetics of a Single Dose of SRP-5051 in Patients With Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov". clinicaltrials.gov.
  12. Commissioner, Office of the (6 March 2019). "FDA grants accelerated approval to first drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy". FDA.
  13. Sarepta's Marburg Drug Shows High Survival Rates After Intramuscular Delivery in Non-Human Primates. Marketwire, 4 March 2013.
  14. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Springs, Maryland. News Release: FDA grants accelerated approval to first targeted treatment for rare Duchenne muscular dystrophy mutation, December 12, 2019. Archived December 13, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
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