BOULDER - Biotech company MiRagen Therapeutics Inc. signed a license agreement with two universities in the United Kingdom to develop a drug treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

MiRagen officials signed the license agreement with the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge after collaborating with researchers at the universities to develop the drug treatment. Pulmonary arterial hypertension is abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs, which is life-threatening.

Now that MiRagen has signed the license agreement for intellectual property rights to the drug treatment, it plans to seek global approval for it, said Bill Marshall, the company's chief executive. In research, the drug treatment helped stop the progression of pulmonary arterial hypertension in certain cases, Marshall said.

"It's an area of high unmet medical need. It's triggered by unknown mechanisms, but it's fairly common at higher altitudes," Marshall said.

In June, MiRagen said it raised $20 million in new venture-capital financing. The company previously signed a strategic alliance with French pharmaceutical company Les Laboratoires Servier in October 2011 to develop certain therapies for patients with cardiovascular disease. That agreement eventually could be worth $1 billion, the company said at the time.