Dive Brief:
- In news creeping out via an Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Five Prime Therapeutics has announced it is dropping its cancer antibody deal with the privately-held La Jolla-biotech Inhibrx.
- The deal, signed in mid-2015, could have been worth almost $500 million per multi-specific antibody in milestone payments, with royalties on top.
- No further details have yet been disclosed by either company.
Dive Insight:
In just a few words in a Form 8-K filing, Five Prime announced its intention this week to cut short its 2015 deal with Inhibrx: "Five Prime delivered to Inhibrx written notice of termination of the Agreement for convenience. Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, termination of the Agreement will become effective on December 27, 2017, which is 120 days after the effective date of Five Prime’s notice of termination."
The deal gave Five Prime an exclusive, worldwide license to antibodies targeting GITR (glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor) for therapeutic and diagnostic uses, along with an exclusive option to worldwide licenses for multi-specific antibodies developed by Inhibrx aimed at both GITR and other targets.
The GITR program was at lead selection stage at the time. As well as an upfront payment of $10 million to Inhibrx, there was potential for up to $342.5 million in milestone payments per therapeutic, rising to $442.5 million if the product gained breakthrough designation from the Food and Drug Administration. Any sales would have triggered low double-digit tiered royalties.
Five Prime had moved a tetravalent antibody from the collaboration, FPA154, into preclinical development, in the belief that it offered superior activity to bivalent antibodies, but it has not yet appeared on the company's development pipeline.
Other products in development at Five Prime include the CDF-1R antibody cabitalizumab (FPA008), in Phase 1b trials in cancer with Bristol Myers Squibb & Co.'s checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab), and in Phase 2 for the treatment of pigmented vilonodular synovitis. Phase 1b trials are also ongoing for FPA144, an FGFR2b antibody in gastric and bladder cancers, and FP-1039, an FGF ligand trap, for mesothelioma.