GSK licenses intellectual property for respiratory disease target identified using Five Prime’s platform

"GSK's decision to exercise the option to license Five Prime intellectual property with respect to a specific respiratory target further demonstrates the productivity and versatility of Five Prime's unique platform to identify novel targets in a wide range of major diseases," said Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Five Prime.

"This is one of several potential targets that Five Prime has identified under the research collaboration with GSK, which have the potential to result in novel medicines for the treatment of respiratory disease."

The respiratory diseases research collaboration with GSK was established in 2012 to identify new therapeutic approaches to treat refractory asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with a particular focus on identifying novel therapeutic targets.

The scope of the collaboration was expanded in April 2014 to include two additional respiratory disease discovery programs and the research term was recently extended through July 2016, which GSK committed to fund.

GSK will have sole responsibility for further development and commercialization of products that incorporate or target the licensed protein target, and for funding any preclinical studies, clinical development, manufacturing and commercialization.

Five Prime is eligible to receive up to $92.75 million in contingent milestone payments for each product that incorporates or targets the licensed protein. These potential milestone payments comprise preclinical and development-related contingent payments of up to $22.25 million, regulatory-related contingent payments of up to $31.0 million and commercial-related contingent payments of up to $39.5 million.

GSK is also obligated to pay Five Prime tiered mid- to high-single digit royalties on net sales of each such product related to such target.

The Five Prime discovery platform includes a library of more than 5,700 extracellular proteins believed to encompass substantially all of the body's medically important targets for protein therapeutics.

Five Prime is applying all aspects of its biologics discovery platform, including cell-based and in vivo screening, receptor-ligand matching technologies and bioinformatics, to probe its library comprehensively and systematically to discover and develop new therapeutic candidates.