By Chris Wack

 

Xencor Inc. (XNCR) said Monday it will regain rights to develop and commercialize XmAb13676, a CD20 x CD3 bispecific antibody, from Novartis (NVS) effective June 20, 2019, due to strategic pipeline reprioritization by Novartis.

The biopharmaceutical company granted Novartis co-development and ex-U.S. commercial rights in June 2016 through a collaboration and license agreement to develop and commercialize novel bispecific antibodies, including XmAb13676 and XmAb14045, and to access Xencor's XmAb bispecific Fc and other Fc technologies.

Xencor said in a release that XmAb13676 is currently being evaluated in an open-label Phase 1, multiple-dose, dose-escalation study to assess its safety, tolerability and preliminary anti-tumor activity in patients with B-cell malignancies, and initial data are expected in 2019.

Under the terms of the collaboration agreement, Xencor and Novartis will continue to share costs for the worldwide development of XmAb14045 with Xencor maintaining U.S. commercialization rights and Novartis having commercialization rights in the rest of the world, and worldwide development costs for XmAb13676 will be shared until June 2020. Novartis received worldwide rights to Xencor's bispecific technology to develop and commercialize four additional targets selected by Novartis. Xencor is eligible to receive clinical, regulatory and sales milestone payments for successful programs, as well as tiered, low double-digit royalties for sales of XmAb14045 outside of the U.S. and mid single-digit tiered royalties for worldwide sales of the four proprietary Novartis bispecific molecules.

Shares of were untraded at $36.58 premarket.

 

Write to Chris Wack at chris.wack@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 07, 2019 08:51 ET (13:51 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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