The Life Sciences team advised Eluminex Biosciences (Suzhou) Limited (Eluminex) on its acquisition of certain assets and the related global development and commercialization rights for a novel oral therapy, zuretinol acetate (zuretinol), from Retinagenix Holdings, LLC (Retinagenix). Zuretinol is an investigational treatment that is currently being developed to treat rare forms of childhood blindness in patients with Leber congenital amaurosis or retinitis pigmentosa caused by mutations of the RPE65 or LRAT gene.
Eluminex is a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on both global and regional development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics to fulfill unmet medical needs in the treatment and management of ophthalmic diseases. The company is headquartered in Suzhou, China with a US-subsidiary office in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Retinagenix is a privately-held biotechnology company devoted to addressing the large and expanding unmet medical needs in genetically determined orphan diseases of the eye.
Under the terms of the asset purchase agreement, Eluminex will make an upfront payment and earnout payments to Retinagenix for the purchase of the assets. The earnout payments to Retinagenix shall include (a) clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments and (b) payments based upon worldwide net sales of products and the sale or use of priority review vouchers.
In addition to the zuretinol program, Eluminex has exclusively licensed from FibroGen, Inc. global rights for the development and commercialization of an investigational clinical-stage biosynthetic cornea derived from recombinant human collagen Type III for the treatment of corneal blindness. A Goodwin’s Life Sciences team led by Can Cui also advised Eluminex in that deal, details of which can be found in its press release.
The Goodwin team advising Eluminex on the Retinagenix transaction was led by Can Cui and Maggie Wong, and included Dan Karelitz and Leon Peschel (Tax), Jacob Osborn and Amy Josselyn (Global Trade), and Paul Jin (Antitrust).
For more details, read the press release.