Oxford BioTherapeutics in £244 million cancer antibody deal with GSK
This article was originally published in Scrip
Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) has entered into a major alliance with GlaxoSmithKline worth up to £244 million in fees and milestones to discover, develop and commercialise therapeutic antibodies in oncology.
The deal is good news for the privatelyheld UK biotechnology company on a number of levels, chief executive Dr Christian Rohlff told Scrip. The collaboration will broaden OBT's pipeline while stabilising its finances over the next couple of years.
GSK is to develop novel antibody therapies against selected OBT targets using in-house resources. In parallel, OBT will develop one of its own monoclonal antibodies, selected together with GSK, through to clinical proof of concept. GSK then has an exclusive option to in-license the product candidate and if taken up, would assume responsibility for further clinical development and commercialisation worldwide.
In addition to the up front and milestone payments, OBT will receive double-digit royalties on sales of any product that it develops to clinical proof of concept and single-digit royalties on worldwide sales of marketed GSK antibody products aimed at OBT targets. Furthermore, OBT may opt to carry forward programmes that GSK chooses not to develop further.
The first half of the deal is structured in a traditional way with an undisclosed up front payment, "front-loaded" milestones and royalties, said Dr Rohlff. He expects early development milestone payments over the next 18 months.
However, with the second part, GSK is buying into OBT's pipeline. This is where the latest deal differs from OBT's earlier deals with Amgen, Medarex and Biosite. "I see those more as enabling deals. We needed access to their antibody platforms to generate our pipeline," explained Dr Rohlff.
OBT has products nearing the clinic through collaborative efforts as well as its lead in-house programme in lung cancer, where an IND filing is planned for next year. OBT is open to partnering the programme and is having discussions.
"Partnerships are the right way forward for us to build a sustainable business over the next two years to move it past the current challenging financial climate," concluded Dr Rohlff.
database
OBT, formerly Oxford Genome Sciences, discovers anticancer antibody targets using its OGAP proteomic database, a large protein collection which includes data on 5,000 cancer membrane proteins combined with relevant genomic and clinical information derived from human blood and cancer tissue studies.