Tekmira Pharmaceuticals

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals was a Canadian pharmaceutical company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Tekmira was founded as a spin-out from its predecessor, Inex Pharmaceuticals, following a near-unanimous vote by Inex's shareholders in September 2006.¹⁾ The spin-out process was completed on May 1, 2007, with shares of the new company launching on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).²⁾

On March 30, 2008, Tekmira announced it was combining its business with Protiva Biotherapeutics, reuniting the intellectual property that had become scattered across several startups out of the University of British Columbia (UBC). The new joint company signed a new deal with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to allow access to their lipid nanoparticle patents - a key component of achieving Alylam's self-described “Alnylam 2020” strategy.^{3) 4)}

An American brach of the company was incorporated in Seattle, Washington on October 20, 2008.⁵⁾

An agreement was signed on July 27, 2009, mutually establishing the rights and limitations held by Alnylam, UBC, AlCana/Acuitas Therapeutics, Tekmira and Protiva, while explicitly acknowledging the complex nature of the variety of relationships they all had with each other.⁶⁾

In June 2011, Tekmira filed a lawsuit against both Alnylam and AlCana/Acuitas, seeking damages for (among other things) “misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference with contractual relations, unjust enrichment, unfair and deceptive acts and trade practices, and civil conspiracy.”⁷⁾

The case between Tekmira and Alnylam was settled in November 2012, resulting in a restructured licensing agreement allowing Alnylam to resume using Tekmira’s LNP patents under terms with new “clarity.”⁸⁾ This also allowed Acuitas to acquire a sublicense for some of the LNP technology from Tekmira - and conversely, Tekmira to use Acuitas’ RNAi tech - an arrangement which went into effect in December 2013.⁹⁾

On December 19, 2014, Tekmira announced the appointment of Richard Henriques to the company's board of directors.¹⁰⁾ Henriques had previously served as Chief Financial Officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and held a leadership role at Merck. In the same press release, Tekmira announced that Ian MacLachlan was to resign as Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer as of December 31, 2014.

The United States Department of Defense awarded Tekmira a $140 million contract to develop a treatment against Ebola in response to the 2013 outbreak in West Africa, but the product failed to pass safety and efficacy testing and was pulled from trials in 2015.^{11) 12)} The company merged with OnCore Biopharma, an offshoot of Gilead Sciences. This led to yet another name change to Arbutus Biopharma.¹³⁾

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