Dive Brief:
- In a U.S.-Japanese deal, Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has granted Bristol-Myers Squibb Company exclusive rights to ONO-4578, a selective PGE2 antagonist. The two companies will also work together to discover and identify more potential leads in this class.
- Ono will get an upfront payment of $40 million from Bristol-Myers, as well as clinical, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments and royalties where the big pharma has sole rights outside Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
- In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, Bristol-Myers and Ono will partner on development and commercialization, and Ono will keep exclusive rights in the ASEAN countries.
Dive Insight:
Bristol-Myers established its immuno-oncology alliance in 2014, and signed a deal with Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. the same year. This agreement has grown out of the original deal, where the two companies agreed to "jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies as single agents and combination regimens to help address the unmet medical needs of patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan."
The New York pharma has had a few struggles with its immuno-oncology franchise, which is focused around the checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab). This year has seen market share gains for competitors Merck & Co.and Roche AG. At the beginning of 2017, Bristol-Myers cut its earning guidance based on predicted flat Opdivo sales.
In clinical trials, things haven't been easy, either. There were clinical holds on certain combination studies of PD-1/L1 inhibitors that have now been cautiously lifted. But it was an upset in a non-small cell lung cancer study last summer that allowed other therapies to start gaining ground on Opdivo, initially the market leader and still the strongest checkpoint inhibitor by revenues.
The Ono deal is part of Bristol-Myers' continued efforts to differentiate its combination strategy.
"To improve long-term outcomes for more patients with cancer, we believe more immuno-oncology based combinations may be required, and we are pleased to continue our long-standing collaboration with Ono with this focus in mind," said Fouad Namouni, head of development, oncology at Bristol-Myers Squibb.