By Angela Chen
Juno Therapeutics Inc. said Monday that it settled a patent
dispute with Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp.
In 2012, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and the
University of Pennsylvania began litigation over patent rights
owned by St. Jude's. The lawsuit was broadened in March 2013 to
include St. Jude's patent on a tool called a chimeric receptor.
Seattle-based Juno, which focuses on cancer drugs, entered the
dispute in December 2013, when it entered a license agreement with
St. Jude's.
Under the terms, Novartis--which had partnered with the
University of Pennsylvania--will pay Juno $12.25 million up front,
as well as future milestone payments. It will give Juno mid-single
digit royalties from U.S. sales of products related to the patent
claims. Novartis also will pay a low double-digit percentage of the
royalties it had paid to the university for global sales of those
products.
Juno will share its payments with St. Jude's, and all claims
have been dismissed. Chief Executive Hans Bishop said the company
was pleased by the settlement.
Both Juno and Novartis, which is based in Switzerland, have been
working on cancer treatments that genetically modify patients'
blood cells. Novartis has created a new unit partly to speed up the
development of these experimental so-called CAR T-cell therapies,
which have shown promising results in early studies, albeit with
small sample sizes.
Write to Angela Chen at angela.chen@dowjones.com
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