Silence Therapeutics, Quark Pharmaceuticals reach settlement

Silence Therapeutics said it has reached a settlement in the arbitration process with Quark Pharmaceuticals, with the former to receive a $1m cash payment.

Under the terms of the agreement, AIM-listed Silence was also eligible to receive either about 2% royalties from Quark plus milestones, or 15% of the clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments and royalties received by Quark from its partner Novartis.

Chief executive Ali Mortazavi said he was pleased the matter had been resolved and said Silence now looked forward to the efficacy readouts in these indications of high unmet need.

"As we have indicated before, the RNA stabilisation chemistry being used in QPI-1002 is a critical component of any RNA medicine and we believe that other clinical programmes will also require licenses to our technology that is protected by Silence's intellectual property."

At about 12:10 GMT, shares in Silence were flat at 106.5p.