argenx receives milestone payment from strategic collaboration with Shire
17 juli 2018 07:00
July 17, 2018
Breda, the Netherlands / Ghent, Belgium - argenx (Euronext & Nasdaq: ARGX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a deep pipeline of differentiated antibody-based therapies for the treatment of severe autoimmune diseases and cancer, today announced that it has reached a preclinical milestone in its strategic collaboration with Shire plc. The milestone, for which an undisclosed payment has been received, was triggered by Shire exercising its exclusive option to in-license an antibody discovered and developed using the Company's proprietary SIMPLE Antibody(TM) platform and Fc engineering technologies.
"The exclusive option exercised by Shire is a testament to the power of our antibody platform and the excellent progress we have made in our strategic collaboration, discovering highly differentiated SIMPLE antibodies against select novel targets," said Hans de Haard, Chief Scientific Officer of argenx. "The productivity of this partnership demonstrates our continued investment in antibody discovery collaborations and complements the clinical development progress we are making with our wholly-owned programs."
argenx entered into an initial collaboration with Shire in 2012 to discover, develop and commercialize human therapeutic antibodies against novel targets to address diverse, rare and unmet diseases. In 2014, the collaboration was expanded to provide Shire with a sublicense to the entire suite of argenx discovery technologies. Under the terms of that agreement, Shire may exercise exclusive options to license, develop and commercialize arising programs, in return for milestone and royalty payments upon achievement of specified development, regulatory and commercial milestones.