Genmab announced it has reached a milestone in its DuoBody technology platform collaboration with Janssen Biotech (Janssen), triggering a $3 million milestone payment.
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The milestone payment is for pre-clinical progress with a DuoBody product candidate targeting two inflammatory mediators, proteins which play a key role in major autoimmune diseases.
"This is another milestone from our productive DuoBody platform collaboration with Janssen. This reflects rapid and robust progress in the development of potential products using our state-of-the art bispecific antibody technology," said Jan van de Winkel, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Genmab.
Today’s news will not impact Genmab’s 2014 financial guidance.
Under the original agreement, Janssen has the right to use the DuoBody technology to create panels of bispecific antibodies (up to 10 DuoBody programs) to multiple disease target combinations with Genmab research funded by Janssen. Genmab received an upfront payment of $3.5 million (approx. DKK 21 million on the date of the agreement) from Janssen in July 2012 and will potentially be entitled to milestone and license payments of up to approximately $175 million (approx. DKK 1,062 million on the date of the agreement), as well as royalties for each commercialized DuoBody product.
Under the terms of a December 2013 amendment, Janssen is entitled to work on up to ten additional programs. Genmab received an initial payment of $2 million (approximately DKK 11 million on the date of the amendment) from Janssen.
For each of the ten additional programs that Janssen successfully initiates, develops and commercializes, Genmab will potentially be entitled to milestone and license payments of up to approximately $174 million (DKK 956 million on the date of the amendment) to $219 million (DKK 1.2 billion on the date of the amendment), depending on the date each program is initiated.
In the most favorable scenario in which all ten additional programs are successfully initiated, developed and commercialized, Genmab would receive average milestone and license payments of approximately $191 million (DKK 1.0 billion on the date of the amendment) for each of the ten programs. In addition, Genmab will be entitled to royalties on sales of any commercialized products.