
23andMe and GSK Extend Drug Development Collaboration for Five Years
10/30/23 (written by: Scott Gleason) 23andMe has announced an extension of its partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The new collaboration, which follows the companies’ previous five-year discovery venture, is a new non-exclusive data licensing agreement, enabling GSK to leverage the genetic and phenotypic resource within the 23andMe database for drug target discovery and other research endeavors.
Under the companies’ original agreement signed in July 2018, GSK made an initial $300 million equity investment in 23andMe and the companies planned to coinvest in therapeutics with 50/50 cost sharing. This partnership is an extension of the original agreement.
The 23andMe database is the one of the world’s largest repository of genetic and phenotypic data derived from willing participants. 23andMe often collects health data from participants as well matching genetic information with known health conditions and outcomes. Under the terms of this renewed collaboration, 23andMe will receive an upfront payment of $20 million for a one-year non-exclusive data license. The agreement also includes access to additional services, such as in-depth analyses of 23andMe’s data beyond the core dataset. As part of the deal, 23andMe will provide its research services to analyze the data during the same duration. Any new drug discovery programs initiated by GSK during this agreement will be owned and independently advanced by GSK. There’s a provision for 23andMe to be eligible for downstream royalties in specific use cases of the database by GSK.
23andMe announced that it is choosing to take royalties on three previous drugs being advanced in GSK’s pipeline. The deal is important from a cash perspective for 23andMe who has generated significant operating losses since inception. 23andMe had $314 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of June 2023. The company has been burning cash from operations at a rate of about $70M a quarter.
“We’ve had an incredibly successful collaboration with GSK over the past five years, and we are excited to continue our work together,” said Anne Wojcicki, CEO and Co-Founder of 23andMe. This partnership has already yielded approximately 50 programs, emphasizing the value of 23andMe’s research platform in generating novel insights rooted in human genetics.