The Life Sciences team represented Pieris Pharmaceuticals in its strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca to develop novel inhaled drugs that leverage Pieris’ Anticalin® platform. AstraZeneca will make an upfront and near term milestone payments to Pieris in the amount of $57.5 million. Further, Pieris has the potential to receive development-dependent milestone and commercial payments of up to $2.1 billion, as well as tiered royalties. The effectiveness of the agreement is subject to compliance with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended.
Under the collaboration, Pieris will be responsible for advancing its preclinical lead candidate, PRS-060 into Phase I clinical trials in 2017. PRS-060 is an Anticalin against interleukin-4 receptor alpha with potential in asthma. AstraZeneca will fund all clinical development and subsequent commercialization programs and Pieris has the option of co-development and co-commercialization in the U.S. from Phase IIa onward. In addition, both will collaborate to progress four additional novel Anticalins against undisclosed targets for respiratory disease. Anticalin molecules are engineered proteins that can mimic antibodies by binding to sites either on other proteins or on small molecules.
Pieris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PIRS) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that discovers and develops Anticalin-based drugs to target validated disease pathways in a unique and transformative way.
The Goodwin team was led by partners Chris Denn and Kingsley Taft.
For additional details on the agreement, please read the press release.