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| NantHealth founder Patrick Soon-Shiong |
Billionaire biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong is expanding his company's relationship with Sorrento Therapeutics ($SRNE), promising $110 million in cash and equity in exchange for the rights to some cancer-fighting immunotherapies. Under the alliance, an arm of Soon-Shiong's NantWorks empire is teaming up with Sorrento to develop new treatments that pair the biotech's antibody discovery platform with its own genomics-based R&D. The subsidiary, NantCell, is paying out $10 million in cash and $100 million in equity for the rights to collaborate, and Sorrento is in line for a share of future profits from any resulting product. The deal comes on the heels of a December pact between the two companies that resulted in NantiBody, a joint venture also focused on cancer immunotherapy. More