Under the agreement, BioSphere has agreed to make payments to DuPont of up to $500,000 based upon the achievement of specified milestones. BioSphere and DuPont will share equally in any cost savings that result from the implementation of DuPont’s yield improvement recommendations and BioSphere will have the right to credit any milestone payments against its cost-savings payment obligations. All improvements developed under the manufacturing agreement will be owned by BioSphere. The parties have also signed an agreement pursuant to which the parties will collaborate on the potential application of DuPont know-how to the manufacturing of BioSphere’s Embosphere and EmboGold Microsphere products in an effort to accelerate the improvement of manufacturing yield of such products.
The goal of the collaboration is to combine BioSphere’s expertise in developing and commercializing minimally invasive products for the endovascular field with the expertise of DuPont Applied Biosciences, a business unit that includes BioMedical. The agreement establishes a non-binding framework for the parties to consider and evaluate potential projects that target and deliver leading edge solutions in embolotherapy.
Richard Faleschini, president and CEO of BioSphere Medical, said: “We believe that the applications for our proprietary microspheres will continue to evolve, and we expect that our pipeline of new products will increase both within and beyond our current therapeutic focus of interventional gynecology and interventional oncology.”