Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has forged a discovery collaboration worth up to $1.23bn with cardiovascular disease specialist, Tenaya Therapeutics.
Through this partnership, Alnylam will harness Tenaya’s capabilities to identify up to 15 novel genetic targets involved in heart disease. In return, Alnylam will hand over up to $10m upfront, while pledging to pay out up to $1.13bn in development and commercial milestone payments linked to any drugs created through the partnership.
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However, Tenaya bears responsibility to yield targets up to Alnylam’s standards, as the $10m upfront fee could be subject to a $500k reduction per candidate for up to eight nominated targets that don’t meet the latter company’s criteria.
Once these targets have been identified, Alnylam and Tenaya will collaborate for around two years to mutually validate them through both in vitro and in vivo methods. Under the terms of this deal, Alnylam will reimburse Tenaya for “full-time employees and out-of-pocket costs and expenses”, as per a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
After Tenaya has fulfilled its end of the deal, Alnylam is hoping to harness these targets to create disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for heart disease, though no fine details on specific indications were shared. Alnylam will assume responsibility for the subsequent development and commercialisation of any drugs created from the targets identified through this partnership.
Alnylam sets heart on cardiovascular market
This deal could see Alnylam further its presence in the cardiovascular market, as the company recently secured US and EU approval for its silent interfering RNA (siRNA) therapy, Amvuttra (vutrisiran), in ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM). Analysts at GlobalData, parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology, forecast that Amvuttra will bring in $7.8bn for the company in 2031, meaning the drug will likely continue to be Alnylam’s most lucrative asset.
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By GlobalDataAlnylam was also responsible for the co-development of Novartis’ blockbuster cholesterol-lowering therapy, Leqvio (inclisiran), which GlobalData forecasts will make $3.9bn in 2031. Novartis previously absorbed the commercialisation rights to the drug through its $9.7bn acquisition of Alnylam’s Leqvio development partner, The Medicines Company, in 2019.
To expand its reach in this market, Alnylam is also running late-stage clinical trials on its investigational assets. This includes the Phase III HELIOS-B study (NCT04153149) evaluating vutrisiran in ATTR-CM, as well as the Phase III ZENITH (NCT07181109) trial assessing zilebesiran for the treatment of hypertension alongside collaborator, Roche.
Cardiovascular deals garner interest
In recent times, there has been a notable uptick in pharma deals within the cardiovascular disease space.
In February 2026, GSK acquired Canadian biotech 35Pharma for $950m, thus absorbing its range of investigational new drug (IND)-stage candidates for both cardiopulmonary diseases and heart failure.
Meanwhile, Novartis inked a research partnership with Unnatural Products (UNP) worth up to $1.7bn in the same month, which will see the pair join forces to develop macrocyclic peptide-based therapies for cardiovascular disease.
According to GlobalData’s Pharmaceutical Intelligence Center, M&As were the most common form of cardiovascular-centric deal in 2025, forming 44% of the agreements during the year.
