Innate Pharma SA (Euronext Paris: IPH; Nasdaq: IPHA) and Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) announced today that Sanofi has exercised its option to license a natural killer (NK) cell engager program in solid tumors from Innate's ANKET platform pursuant to the terms of the research collaboration and license agreement signed in December 2022.
Following a research collaboration period, Sanofi will be responsible for all development, manufacturing and commercialization. Sanofi stillretains the option to one additional ANKET target as per the license agreement.
Eric Vivier, Ph.D., DVM, PhD, Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer of Innate Pharma, said: 'We have been collaborating with Sanofi since 2016 and together we have made significant progress in advancing multi-specific NK Cell Engagers for the treatment of various cancers with two programs now in the clinic. Building on our partnership with Sanofi, the exercise of this option is another important milestone as we continue to grow our ANKET platform.'
Under the terms of the December 2022 agreement, Innate will receive a EUR15m payment for the exercise of this option. Innate Pharma is eligible for up to EUR1.35bn total in preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones plus royalties on potential net sales.
Valeria Fantin, Ph.D., Global Head of Oncology Research at Sanofi, states: 'Sanofi is pleased with our collaboration with Innate and continues to be excited at the potential of investigational NK Cell Engagers. The emerging results we have seen show promise at the possibility of offering options to patients who have limited treatments available to them.'
About ANKET
ANKET (Antibody-based NK cell Engager Therapeutics) is Innate's proprietary platform for developing next-generation, multi-specific natural killer (NK) cell engagers to treat certain types of cancer.
This versatile, fit-for-purpose technology is creating an entirely new class of molecules to induce synthetic immunity against cancer.
About the Innate-Sanofi research collaboration and license agreements
The Company has a research collaboration and license agreement with Sanofi to apply Innate's proprietary technology to the development of innovative multi-specific antibody formats engaging NK cells through the activating receptors NKp46 and CD16 to kill tumor cells.
Under the 2016 research collaboration and license agreement, Sanofi is responsible for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of products resulting from the research collaboration, IPH6101/SAR'579 (Trifunctional anti-CD123 NKp46xCD16 NK cell engager) and IPH6401/SAR'514 (Trifunctional anti-BCMA NKp46xCD16 NK cell engager). Innate Pharma is eligible to up to EUR400m in development and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties on net sales.
As part of the license agreement entered in December 2022, Sanofi licensed IPH62 (B7-H3) and one undisclosed ANKET programs and has the option for one additional target. Under the terms of the 2022 agreement, Innate Pharma is eligible to up to EUR1.35bn total in preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones plus royalties on potential net sales.
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