Aduro BioTech has entered into its second agreement with Janssen Biotech, Inc., part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, granting an exclusive, worldwide license to certain product candidates engineered for the treatment of lung cancer and certain other cancers based on its novel LADD immunotherapy platform. Under the agreement, facilitated by the Johnson & Johnson Innovation center in California, Aduro will receive a $30 million up-front payment and is eligible to receive significant development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments up to a potential total of $817 million. In addition, Aduro is eligible to receive high single-digit to double-digit tiered royalties on worldwide net sales upon successful launch and commercialization.
Under the agreement, Janssen will have exclusive rights to develop and commercialize LADD product candidates in lung cancer and will assume responsibility for all research, development, manufacturing, regulatory and commercialization activities for the licensed products. Aduro may provide assistance in any of these areas upon request and will receive additional fees for these support activities.
“Since our initial agreement with Janssen in May of this year for new immunotherapies for prostate cancer, they have been terrific partners and we’ve established a strong collaboration focused on advancing our technologies forward in their licensed indications,” said Stephen T. Isaacs, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Aduro. “We believe our LADD technology also offers tremendous promise as a potential treatment for lung cancer and we are pleased to expand our relationship with Janssen, a company with significant experience and resources focused in both lung and prostate cancer. Separately, Aduro continues to make progress with our broad array of immunotherapy platforms in a number of other oncology indications, including pancreatic cancer, mesothelioma and glioblastoma among others.”
The transaction is subject to clearance by the US antitrust authorities under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and will become final as soon as such clearance has occurred.
In May of this year, Aduro announced its first agreement with Janssen Biotech, Inc. granting the company an exclusive, worldwide license to certain product candidates specifically engineered for the treatment of prostate cancer based on its novel LADD immunotherapy platform. Under that agreement, also facilitated by the Johnson & Johnson Innovation center in California, Aduro is eligible to receive up to $365 million in upfront and development and commercialization milestones.
