GSK is boosting its RNA ambitions, announcing Thursday it has acquired a small, privately held San Diego startup called Elsie Biotechnologies that the British drugmaker has been collaborating with for nearly a year.
GSK is paying as much as $50 million to acquire Elsie, in a deal made up of unspecified upfront and milestone payments. While small in size, the deal underlines GSK’s desire to become a key player in RNA-targeted therapies, with Elsie’s technology focused on identifying antisense oligonucleotides, which interfere or bind to RNA and shut down the production of disease-causing proteins. GSK believes the technology could help it explore beyond its current RNA-targeting programs against hepatitis B and fatty liver disease.
Tony Wood“By bringing together Elsie’s expertise and our internal capabilities, we can design and develop oligonucleotides for difficult to treat diseases of scale with larger patient populations,” GSK Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood said in a statement.
GSK first announced a partnership with Elsie in 2023, then deepened the relationship earlier this year by exercising an option for a non-exclusive license to its discovery platform. That has now turned into an exit for Elsie.
“There are many ways people have tried to look at modifying oligos to increase potency, increase stability, and decrease toxicity,” Christopher Austin, GSK’s SVP of research technologies, said in an interview with Endpoints News. “Elsie is, in our opinion, one of the leaders in really novel thinking about building on that success, to enable a next generation of potent, selective, non-toxic oligonucleotides that will therefore be applicable to common disorders.”
GSK isn’t disclosing specifics on what sets Elsie’s technology apart or which common diseases they may target first. But Austin said they plan to grow Elsie’s San Diego-based team, which stands at about a dozen people today.
Kevin Green“We believe our platform will make significant contributions to the field and we believe GSK is the best partner to help advance this effort,” Elsie Chief Operating Officer Kevin Green said in a statement.
GSK has amassed an RNA portfolio through several deals, including hepatitis B drug candidates respectively in-licensed from Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 2019 and from Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals in 2023.
GSK also has another RNA-targeted therapy, GSK4532990, from Arrowhead that is now in a Phase 2 study for MASH. The pharma also has an ongoing collaboration with Wave Life Sciences that includes an RNA editing drug called WVE–06 for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.