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| Shire R&D chief Philip Vickers |
Deepening its ties with Dutch antibody specialist arGEN-X, Shire ($SHPG) has expanded the scope of the pair's R&D agreement and kicked in some cash to get the ball rolling.
Under the deal, Shire will make an upfront investment of €3 million in cash and €12 million in equity, totaling about $20.4 million, and embark on a multiyear R&D alliance. Using arGEN-X's antibody discovery platform, the partners will focus on some undisclosed targets in Shire's crosshairs, with the larger company signing on to cover research costs and hand out untold payments tied to clinical, regulatory and sales milestones.
The tie-up follows a 2012 partnership between the two focused on rare diseases, under which arGEN-X lent out its discovery technology to help generate preclinical leads for Shire.
"Our arGEN-X collaboration has exceeded our expectations in delivering highly differentiated antibody programs within our therapeutic focus," Shire R&D chief Philip Vickers said in a statement. "The time is right to commit more significantly to the company through a longer-term investment in its unique, world-class technologies."
For arGEN-X, the expanded partnership follows similar discovery-minded deals with Bayer and Eli Lilly ($LLY), which focus on the biotech's Simple Antibody system. The core technology is based on the immune system of llamas, a platform arGEN-X says beats out traditional transgenic mouse models in churning out antibodies that match variable genes in humans.
In the biotech's latest deal, Shire gets first go at any and all programs the pair discovers, but arGEN-X has the right to license anything its partner doesn't want. That, CEO Tim Van Hauwermeiren said, will help "further our ambitions as a clinical stage, product-focused company."
The company's proprietary pipeline includes the midstage cancer treatment ARGX-110, the Phase I tumor therapy ARGX-111 and a slate of preclinical candidates, all based on the Simple Antibody platform.
- read the statement