Under the terms of the agreement, Arius will receive an upfront technology access fee of $2 million, consisting of $1 million each in cash and equity investment respectively, and research funding for the three years.
Arius will also be entitled to milestone payments based on progress through clinical development plus royalties on net sales for any licensed product. Takeda will assume the responsibility and costs of development and commercialization while Arius will have an option to co-develop any product. Further financial terms were not disclosed.
The FunctionFirst platform has generated over 350 antibodies for the Arius library which are being pursued for internal development and partnership deals. Antibodies discovered through Arius’ proprietary technology have demonstrated anti-tumor activity in animal models of a number of human cancers and have been shown to recognize important cancer targets.
“We expect that the unique approach of Arius, which is to select the functional antibodies first, will lead to an improved success ratio of developing therapeutic antibodies for a variety of cancers,” said Dr Shigenori Ohkawa, general manager of pharmaceutical research division of Takeda. “We believe that this joint research Collaboration with Arius will contribute to enhancing our cancer franchise as one of our core therapeutic areas for future growth.”