Almirall, S.A. and Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that the companies have entered into an exclusive license agreement for the asset ZKN-013. Under the agreement, Almirall obtains global rights to develop and commercialize ZKN-013, including for the use in orphan dermatological diseases. ZKN-013 is a potentially promising oral, nonsense mutation readthrough drug, which enables the host cells to produce functional proteins which counteract the root cause of these rare dermatological and potentially other diseases.

The drug candidate is expected to shortly enter into Phase I development in healthy volunteers. As part of this agreement, Eloxx will receive an upfront of $3 million, and additional payments throughout the potential development phases, including regulatory and sales milestones of up to $470 million, as well as tiered royalties based on any potential future global sales. RDEB /JEB are rare skin diseases characterized by defects in the Collagen7 gene which is essential for the correct formation of the skin structure and barrier function.

ZKN-013 has demonstrated robust functional preclinical activity in RDEB/JEB patient cells and in APCmin (multiple intestinal neoplasia) mice. The studies demonstrated that ZKN-013 induces the production of functional, full-length COL7 in RDEB patient cells. ZKN-013 is also being developed for the treatment of FAP patients with nonsense mutations characterized by proliferation of colon polyps and progression to colon cancer.

FAP is a rare GI disease with patients progressing to colon cancer caused by mutations in the APC gene. ZKN-013 is Eloxx?s lead TURBO-ZM based molecule. Eloxx's TURBO-ZM platform uses chemistry technology to develop novel Ribosome Modulating Agents to target the human ribosome to develop new potential therapeutics.

Ribosomes form the translation machinery that generates functional proteins from genetic sequences; modulating the ribosome subunits provides a therapeutic approach to address a number of different diseases.