Wragge & Co's Life Sciences team has helped to deliver an important deal between Astellas and Basilea. Acting for Astellas, the team worked internationally to deliver an amended agreement for the development and commercialisation of Isavuconazole, a potential new therapy being developed globally to treat invasive, life-threatening, fungal diseases.
The deal will see Astellas, headquartered in Japan, and Basilea, headquartered in Switzerland, amend their existing licensing agreement, signed in February 2010, to allow Astellas to secure exclusive commercialisation rights to Isavuconazole in the U.S. and Canada. In return for waiving its co-promotion rights in the U.S. and Canada, Basilea will receive exclusive commercialisation rights to Isavuconazole in the rest of the world. The agreement also provides for the further global development of Isavuconazole. The total amount of sales and development milestones that Astellas is subject to paying Basilea under the amended agreement is CHF 374 million.
The agreement is just the latest stage in a partnership between the two pharmaceutical companies originally negotiated by the Life Sciences team in 2010. Working with client teams based in the US, Japan and Europe, the Wragge & Co team drafted the complex, world-wide licensing agreement.
Partner Patrick Duxbury, who led on the deal on Wragge & Co's side said: "This transaction required a significant level of international insight and life sciences expertise. Things have been happening on this deal, somewhere in the world, more or less 24 hours a day for the last month and a great deal of hard work has gone into it. The result is fantastic however and will hopefully lead to the development and delivery of an exciting new anti-fungal medication."
Assisting Patrick on the deal were life sciences partner Clark Sargent, associate Susan Wilson and IP solicitor Jenny Davies and corporate partner Michael Luckman.
Wragge & Co's 25-strong Life Sciences team is "phenomenal within this space" (Chambers UK 2014). It provides transactional, litigation, corporate and regulatory expertise to a global client list which includes; AstraZeneca, Astex Therapeutics, arGEN-X, Eisai, GSK, Heptares Therapeutics, the Medical Research Council and Prostrakan.
Team highlights include advising AstraZeneca on a major licensing agreement to explore new cancer treatments; working with GlaxoSmithKline on a €423 million cross-border licensing agreement with biotechnology company MorphoSys AG; and assisting Bial Portela on its license agreement with Japanese company Ono, aimed at the development and commercialisation in Japan of Opicapone, a new treatment for Parkinson's disease. The team also assisted Astex Pharmaceuticals on two significant drug development agreements in the area of oncology and advised ProStrakan on its transaction with Aptalis in relation to Rectiv.
