On July 11, 2023 Silence Therapeutics plc, Nasdaq: SLN ("Silence" or "the Company"), an experienced and innovative biotechnology company committed to transforming peoples’ lives by silencing diseases through precision engineered medicines, reported that it will receive a $4.0 million cash payment from Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Company Limited ("Hansoh") following the achievement of two undisclosed preclinical milestones (Press release, Silence Therapeutics, JUL 11, 2023, View Source [SID1234633174]).

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"We are very pleased with the continued progress being made in our Hansoh Pharma collaboration," said Craig Tooman, President and CEO of Silence. "Today’s news follows the $10.0 million milestone payment we achieved in our AstraZeneca collaboration in May and reflects our ongoing efforts to advance our partnered pipeline. We continue to be excited about the advancement of our siRNA technology in both partnered and proprietary programs."

Silence and Hansoh entered a collaboration in October 2021 to develop siRNAs ("short interfering RNAs") leveraging Silence’s proprietary mRNAi GOLD platform for three undisclosed targets. Under the terms of the agreement, Silence has exclusive rights to the first two targets in all territories except the China region. Hansoh has the exclusive option to license rights to those two targets in Greater China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and global rights to the third target.

Hansoh made a $16 million upfront payment to Silence and the Company is eligible to receive up to $1.3 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestones. Silence is also eligible to receive royalties tiered from low double-digit to mid-teens on Hansoh net product sales. Today’s announcement represents the second and third research milestone payments achieved under the collaboration. The Company achieved the first milestone payment for $2.0 million in April 2022.