AstraZeneca PLC And Starpharma Ink Drug Delivery Deal Worth up to $450 Million
September 8, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MELBOURNE, Australia— AstraZeneca PLC struck a deal worth up to $450 million with Australia-based Starpharma to license that company’s DEP drug delivery platform for use with its oncology medications.
Starpharma’s licensing agreement with AstraZeneca focuses on novel compounds, and not on unmodified drugs in currently marketed formulations. AstraZeneca did not disclose which oncology drug it initially planned to develop for use with Starpharma’s DEP system. Jackie Fairley, Starpharma’s chief executive officer, said the AstraZeneca deal is structured for multiple products, which increases the potential value of the deal.
Under terms of the agreement, Starpharma will receive $2 million in an upfront payment and will be eligible for milestone payments of up to $124 million. Additional sales milestones and additional products used under the agreement could cause the value of the deal to soar. Additionally, AstraZeneca will fund all development and commercialization of the product.
“We estimate that each qualifying product successfully commercialized under this agreement could be worth over its life around U.S. $450 million to Starpharma and, depending on the range of indications and degree of commercial success in the market, potentially significantly more,” Fairley said in a statement.
Susan Galbraith, head of AstraZeneca’s oncology discovery unity, said in a statement that the licensing agreement will allow the company to “further harness the DEP technology and evaluate its potential across novel molecules within our oncology portfolio.”
Starpharma’s DEP system centers on the use of the company’s proprietary dendrimers, with the aim of enhancing the dosing and efficacy characteristics of pharmaceuticals.
Fairley called the agreement an exciting opportunity for her company. The development follows a “successful collaboration in which Starpharma’s DEP drug delivery technology has been applied to an important AstraZeneca oncology candidate.”
Starpharma retains all rights to its delivery system and remains eligible to license its use to other companies.
AstraZeneca has made a number of recent deals to expand its oncology platform, including one struck with Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. last month. The companies will study Peregrine’s investigational phosphatidylserine (PS)-signaling pathway inhibitor, bavituximab, in combination with AstraZeneca’s investigational anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, durvalumab (MEDI4736). Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The two companies will collaborate on a non-exclusive basis, to evaluate the combination of bavituximab and durvalumab with chemotherapy as a potential treatment in various solid tumors.
AstraZeneca has been developing multiple immuno-oncology treatments and this year has moved deeper into the field. In January AstraZeneca tapped Robert Iannone as the head of its immuno-oncology development programs.
On Aug. 6 AstraZeneca struck a licensing agreement with Heptares Therapeutics worth more than $510 million, for global rights to HTL-1071 for the treatment of a number of cancers. HTL-1071 is an adenosine A2A receptor antagonist.
Earlier this month the company struck several deals to bolster its immuno-oncology arm.
On Aug. 10, AstraZeneca announced a deal between MedImmune , AstraZeneca’s research and development arm, with Plymouth Meeting, Penn.-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals . Under this new deal, MedImmune acquired exclusive rights to Inovio’s INO-3112 immunotherapy against cancers caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18.
In July, AstraZeneca struck a deal with Genzyme Corporation, a division of Sanofi , to sell cancer drug Caprelsa (vandetanib) for the treatment of symptomatic medullar thyroid carcinoma.
During a June meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Pascal Soiriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive officer, said combination therapies “hold the key to transforming clinical practice for the patients not benefiting from the currently-available immunotherapies.”