Ipsen will acquire exclusive worldwide rights to a pre-clinical stage programme with potential oncology applications, the company and its two partners, the Université de Montréal and IRICoR, announced.
Under the terms of the licence agreement, the Université de Montréal will receive an upfront payment from Ipsen and will also be eligible for development and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on net sales.
Christelle Huguet, senior vice president and head of research, external innovation and early development at Ipsen, said: “We are energised to take this investigational treatment forward in its development journey, determining its potential across a number of solid tumours and haematological cancers.”
The agreement comes as a result of the collaboration established in May 2020 between the three partners, who said they are further expanding their strategic partnership with a new multi-year collaboration and option agreement for two discovery-stage oncology programmes.
As part of the new agreement, a team of interdisciplinary drug discovery scientists at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at the Université de Montréal will be responsible for the discovery and advancement of therapeutic compounds up to the drug candidate stage.
In exchange, Ipsen will pay the Université de Montréal an upfront fee and research funding for two compounds that reach the drug candidate stage and, should the company decide to exercise the option, it would assume all global development and commercialisation responsibilities of resulting drug candidates.
In this case, the Université de Montréal would also receive further payments if key development and commercial milestones are met and be entitled to royalties for any commercialised product.
“The signing of the exclusive licence agreement and the initiation of a new collaboration for the discovery of new compounds against high-value oncology targets represent a natural expansion of our strategic partnership with Ipsen,” said Claude Larose, vice president, business development at IRICoR.
He continued: “This programme was initially financed by IRICoR before the partnership with Ipsen, so we are excited to see the recent advancement under Ipsen’s leadership and look forward to advancing this new drug-discovery programme and, if successful, entering into a subsequent licence agreement with Ipsen in order to bring these therapies to patients and to establish more opportunities for long-term value creation.”