Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co's life sciences team has advised Netherlands and Belgium-based biopharmaceutical company arGEN-X on its first collaboration with Bayer to discover and develop therapeutic antibody candidates and on a strategic alliance with Shire. Both deals were completed in the same week.
arGEN-X is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating and developing differentiated therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and severe autoimmune diseases.
The company has announced the initiation of a collaboration with Bayer Pharma AG (Bayer), leveraging its SIMPLE Antibody technology for the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies. The collaboration centres on a novel approach to addressing complex targets across multiple therapeutic areas that are often intractable by existing antibody platforms. With this new collaboration with Bayer, arGEN-X will apply its SIMPLE Antibody technology to multiple targets submitted by Bayer. The parties will work together to validate human antibody leads in disease-relevant models, with Bayer being responsible for further preclinical and clinical development and commercialization of therapeutic antibody products.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bayer will pay arGEN-X an upfront technology access fee, research support and technical success-based milestones. Bayer will also pay clinical, regulatory and product sales-based milestones as antibody programs progress through clinical development and registration.
Under the new long-term strategic alliance with Shire, arGEN-X will bring its entire suite of human antibody discovery technologies to a partnership focused on multiple targets aligned with Shire's therapeutic focus. The multi-year initiative aimed at helping augment the Shire development pipeline follows an initial research and development collaboration undertaken in March 2012. Shire will make a total investment of €15 million (US$20.4 million) in arGEN-X, consisting of €3 million in upfront cash and €12 million in equity. In addition, it will fund the collaborative research programs at arGEN-X and pay fees, clinical, regulatory and sales milestones, as well as single digit royalties on therapeutic product sales.
Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co partners Patrick Duxbury and Luke Kempton advised arGEN-X working with CEO, Tim Van Hauwermeiren and VP Business Development, Debbie Allen. These agreements are the sixth and seventh transactions the team has undertaken for arGEN-X, including the original collaboration with Shire.
Pat Duxbury said: "We are delighted to have acted for arGEN-X on these two important transactions which demonstrate our expertise in this exciting sector."
Debbie Allen from arGEN-X commented further: "Partnering is fundamental to our business. We always feel we are in safe hands under the guidance of such seasoned experts in the Wragge Lawrence Graham life sciences team".
Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co's life sciences team comprises full-service expertise in IP, corporate, antitrust, regulatory and dispute resolution matters. It has extensive experience of global patent infringement actions, European regulatory compliance, M&A transactions and cross-border licence and collaboration agreements. Its clients include AstraZeneca, Astex Pharmaceuticals, Astellas, Chroma Therapeutics, Lundbeck, Heptares Therapeutics and MedImmune.
About arGEN-X
arGEN-X is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating and developing differentiated therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and severe autoimmune diseases. arGEN-X has generated a clinical pipeline of differentiated antibody candidates using its SIMPLE Antibody discovery platform. SIMPLE Antibody has a particular strength in addressing novel, complex disease targets that are difficult to access using established antibody technology platforms. Fc engineering technologies - NHance, ABDEG and POTELLIGENT - further enhance the therapeutic properties of SIMPLE Antibody leads in terms of their residence time in the body, their ability to clear disease targets or pathogenic antibodies and their cell killing potency through Antibody-Dependent Cell-mediated Cytotoxicity (ADCC), respectively. arGEN-X has leveraged its suite of antibody technologies in forging strategic collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to provide new approaches to diseases with unmet medical needs.
