miRagen Therapeutics, Inc, a biopharmaceutical company focused on improving patients’ lives by developing innovative microRNA (miRNA)-based therapeutics for cardiovascular and muscle disease, and the University of Colorado (CU) have entered into sponsored research and licensing agreements to collaborate on miRNA therapeutics discovery and development.

The sponsored research agreement will support the analysis of miRNA and gene expression changes from a study conducted at the University of Colorado Cardiovascular Institute at the UC Denver School of Medicine, “Beta Blocker Effects on Remodeling and Gene Expression (BORG),” while the licensing agreement will enable the company to commercialize intellectual property associated with discoveries made during the research project. Further analysis of the completed study, funded by miRagen, will provide the Company with data on miRNA changes in human heart failure patients followed over two years with associated disease outcomes. Financial details of the agreements were not disclosed.

The BORG study was led by Michael R Bristow, professor of Medicine and co-director of the Cardiovascular Institute at CU, and a co-founder of miRagen, and Brian Lowes, associate professor of Medicine. CU investigators in laboratories led by David Port, and Carmen Sucharov, will also be contributing to the study. The study, which is the next-generation version of a landmark serial myocardial gene expression study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002 (Lowes et al NEJM 346:1357-1365), was conducted in 63 chronic heart failure/non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy patients followed for an 18 month period, with measurements of chamber remodelling and messenger RNA as well as miRNA expression at baseline, three months and 12 months.

“We are extremely pleased to work closely with Dr. Bristow and the University of Colorado and to gain access to these unique data in human patients with heart failure,” said William S Marshall, president and CEO of miRagen Therapeutics, Inc. “This provides us with the ability to analyze miRNA levels, as well as gene expression changes, in a given patient at specific points in time in their disease progression. We believe this will provide a very powerful tool in stratifying our miRNA targets and support our mission of developing groundbreaking miRNA-based therapeutics to treat patients with cardiovascular and muscle disease.”

"The BORG study performed at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center contains novel information on miRNAs and their relationships to myocardial remodeling and messenger RNA (mRNA) behaviour, which will be very useful to miRagen in target selection for their therapeutic miRNA approaches,” said Dr Bristow. “In drug development, animal models are of course very valuable, but for target validation as well as novel target discovery, human data are vitally important."

“The University is very pleased with closing this deal,” said David Poticha of the CU Technology Transfer Office. “The team that has been assembled by miRagen has a strong history of successfully developing Colorado-based biotechnology companies, and we firmly believe miRagen is the right and best partner to help commercialize the microRNA technologies developed by Drs. Port, Sucharov and Bristow.”

MicroRNAs have emerged as an important class of small RNAs encoded in the genome.

miRagen Therapeutics, Inc, was founded in 2007 to develop innovative microRNA-based therapeutics for cardiovascular and muscle disease.