Five Prime Therapeutics and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) have signed an agreement to discover, develop and commercialise immuno-oncology therapies directed toward targets identified in two undisclosed immune checkpoint pathways.
The deal will see BMS use Five Prime’s target discovery platform to advance its current immuno-oncology programmes by identifying the most viable drug targets for continued R&D.
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Drug candidates developed against the new and existing targets will be studied either as single agents or in combination with existing or potential BMS immuno-oncology therapies.
Bristol-Myers Squibb executive vice-president and chief scientific officer Francis Cuss said immuno-oncology has the potential to be transformational in the treatment of cancer.
"Five Prime’s innovative technology platforms complement our immuno-oncology pipeline and will help expand our understanding of promising new therapeutic options for patients," Cuss said.
Five Prime president and CEO Lewis Williams said: "This strategic alliance is evidence that our protein discovery platform is ideally suited to identify novel immune checkpoint targets for the development of next generation immuno-oncology therapeutics."
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By GlobalDataAs part of the deal, BMS will get exclusive, worldwide rights to develop and commercialise products directed toward certain protein targets identified by Five Prime prior to and during the collaboration.
BMS will make an upfront payment of $20m to Five Prime and provide up to $9.5m in research funding over the course of the research term.
In addition, BMS will make a payment of around $21m to acquire 4.9% of Five Prime’s outstanding common stock purchased at approximately a 30% premium.
Five Prime will also be eligible to receive about $300m in future development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments per collaboration target and tiered mid-single-digit rising to low-double-digit royalty payments on net sales of each product commercialised by BMS.
