ReNeuron has announced its 3rd exosome collaboration agreement and has made another step to justifying the strategic shift to exosomes as announced earlier this month. As a reminder ReNeuron’s exosomes are derived from human neural stem cells, and are clinical-grade, scalable and have a natural ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Exosomes can be used to deliver therapeutics for diseases of the brain. The agreement today is with an undisclosed major US pharmaceutical company, but like the previous exosome agreements (announced in April 2020 and Jan 2019), it is a research evaluation agreement and carries little immediate financial bearing. Nevertheless, proof-ofconcept in specific disease areas expected on the back of agreements could enable lucrative out-licensing agreements. We note there has been a spate of recent and highly rewarding licensing agreements with exosome developer peers - Codiak (with Sarepta and Jazz) and Evox (with Takeda and Eli Lilly). In particular, we note that the Codiak-Sarepta deal was valued at $72.5m in upfront and near-term license payments. We make no changes to our forecasts or valuation analysis at this juncture, but will continue to follow the exosome platform closely. We reiterate our positive stance on ReNeuron.
