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Agreements

Date: 2018-01-08

Type of information: Milestone

Compound: immuno-oncology therapies directed toward targets in three undisclosed immune checkpoint pathways

Company: Five Prime Therapeutics (USA - CA) BMS (USA - NY)

Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology

Type agreement: R&D - development - commercialisation

Action mechanism: immune checkpoint inhibitor

Disease:

Details:

  • • On January 4, 2017, Five Prime Therapeutics announced that BMS has exercised its option to extend the research term of its discovery collaboration agreement with Five Prime for the discovery, development and commercialization of immuno-oncology therapies directed toward targets in three undisclosed immune checkpoint pathways. The original collaboration agreement was established in March 2014 and focused on two undisclosed immune checkpoint pathways. In January 2016, the companies added a third immune checkpoint pathway to the collaboration. BMS has now elected to extend the research term from its original ending date of March 2017 to March 2018, and will provide additional research funding for the 12-month extension of the research term.
  • BMS will utilize Five Prime's discovery capabilities to advance these three immuno-oncology programs toward the identification of drug candidates for continued research and development. Drug candidates developed against targets in these pathways may be studied either as single agents or in combination with approved BMS immuno-oncology therapies or others in development. Five Prime and BMS continue work on antibody drug candidates targeting these pathways. BMS has advanced the first antibody from this collaboration to IND-enabling activities.

Financial terms:

  • Under the terms of the original agreement, BMS will obtain exclusive, worldwide rights to develop and commercialize products directed toward certain protein targets in the three checkpoint pathways identified by Five Prime prior to and during the collaboration. BMS paid an upfront fee of $20 million to Five Prime and will provide up to $11.6 million in research funding over the course of the entire research term. Five Prime will be eligible to receive up to $300 million in future development (including $5 million upon filing of the first IND application by BMS), regulatory and sales-based milestone payments per collaboration product and tiered mid-single-digit rising to low-double-digit royalty payments on net sales of each product commercialized by BMS.

Latest news:

  • • On January 8, 2018, Five Prime Therapeutics announced that it has achieved a milestone for the first Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA by BMS for a therapeutic candidate under the immune checkpoint pathway discovery collaboration between the companies. The first clinical candidate from the collaboration is a fully-human monoclonal antibody targeting TIM-3 (T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-3), an immune checkpoint receptor that is known to limit the duration and magnitude of T-cell responses1. This first IND application triggers a $5 million milestone payment to Five Prime.
  • Under the terms of the discovery collaboration agreement, BMS has exclusive, worldwide rights to develop and commercialize products directed toward certain protein targets in three checkpoint pathways. Five Prime is eligible to receive up to $300 million in future development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments for each collaboration target, including TIM-3. Five Prime is also eligible to receive tiered royalties starting from mid-single-digit increasing to low-double-digit percentages of global net sales of each product commercialized by BMS.In addition, BMS has exercised its option to further extend the research term of the collaboration between the companies for the discovery, development and commercialization of immuno-oncology (I-O) therapies directed toward targets in two additional undisclosed immune checkpoint pathways. BMS has elected to extend the research term to March 2019 and will provide additional funding to Five Prime for the extended term. This is the second extension to the original collaboration term under the agreement that was established in March 2014.
  • BMS will continue to utilize Five Prime's discovery capabilities to advance the immune checkpoint programs, including to identify and select drug candidates for preclinical development. Drug candidates developed against targets in these pathways may be studied either as single agents or in combination with approved BMS immuno-oncology therapies or others in development. 

Is general: Yes