Silence Therapeutics, a biotechnology company working to silence diseases through precision engineered medicines, will receive a $4 million cash payment from Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group  following the achievement of two undisclosed preclinical milestones.

Silence and Hansoh entered a collaboration in October 2021 to develop siRNAs (“short interfering RNAs”) leveraging Silence’s mRNAi GOLD platform for three undisclosed targets. Under the agreement, Silence has exclusive rights to the first two targets in all territories except China. 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 on Hansoh product sales.

The announcement represents the second and third research milestone payments achieved under the collaboration. The company achieved the first milestone payment of $2 million in April 2022.

“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 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.”