15-02-2018 .LINK : Seattle Genetics (Nasdaq: SGEN) has announced its third deal in as many weeks.
The US biotech has signed a licensing agreement with PharmaMar (MCE: PHM), a Spain-based company that specializes in the discovery and development of innovative marine-derived drugs for cancer.
The deal gives Seattle exclusive worldwide rights to certain PharmaMar proprietary molecules for the development, manufacture and commercialization of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) or other drug conjugates incorporating PharmaMar payloads.
Seattle will pay $5 million upfront on signing, followed by milestones if it takes a product into clinical development.
PharmaMar is also eligible for potential approval and sales milestones as well as royalties, once a product receives regulatory approval and is commercialized.
PharmaMar’s Marine Payloads unit is focused on new, structurally diverse molecules with novel mechanisms of action that provide an opportunity to develop next generation ADCs. These payloads are highly potent, with sub-nanomolar cytotoxic activity.
Seattle’s deal with the Madrid-based company comes just days after the announcement of its collaboration and license agreement with Pieris Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: PIRS), aimed at developing multiple targeted bispecific immuno-oncology treatments for solid tumors and blood cancers.
Under the terms of that accord, Seattle will pay Pieris a $30 million upfront fee, tiered royalties on net sales up to low double-digits, and up to $1.2 billion in total success-based payments across three product candidates.
In late January it was also announced that Seattle was to pay around $614 million to acquire Cascadian Therapeutics (Nasdaq: CASC) and its most advanced program tucatinib, an oral, small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) that is highly selective for HER2, a growth factor receptor that is over-expressed in multiple cancers, including breast, colorectal, ovarian and gastric.