Curis and Debiopharm have entered into an agreement for Curis’ Heat Shock Protein (Hsp90) technology, including CUDC-305, the company’s lead Hsp90 inhibitor candidate.
Under the terms of the agreement, Debiopharm will assume all future development responsibility and incur all future costs related to the licensed Hsp90 technology, including CUDC-305.
Debiopharm will file an application with health authorities to begin the phase I clinical testing for CUDC-305 in fall 2009. Curis will receive an up-front license fee and, pending approval of such application, will also receive additional near-term payments.
Curis is further eligible to receive additional contingent payments assuming the successful achievement of specified clinical development and regulatory approval objectives, as well as royalties on products that are successfully commercialised by Debiopharm or its sublicensees.
Dan Passeri, president and CEO of Curis, said: We are very pleased to have entered into this license agreement with Debiopharm. We have been highly impressed with the depth of Debiopharm’s development expertise and commitment to working with our team to create an optimum clinical development plan for our novel drug candidate, CUDC-305, which we believe may offer future benefit to cancer patients.
This transaction is particularly important to Curis because the agreement provides non-dilutive capital that we expect will allow us to continue to seek to internally develop CUDC-101, our first-in-class HDAC/EGFR/Her2 inhibitor that is currently enrolling patients in a Phase I dose escalation trial, as well as our other promising preclinical multi-targeted development programs. We believe that the up-front license fee and near-term contingent payments will extend our cash runway well into 2011, he added.