Cheshire pharma business launches dispute process over ‘missing milestone payment’
Evgen Pharma, the Alderley Park-based clinical stage drug development company, has issued a notice of dispute with Swiss firm Stalicla SA over unpaid milestone payments.
In October 2022, Evgen announced a deal with Stalicla, a specialist in the identification of specific phenotypes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and other neurodevelopmental disorders, which could be worth up to $160.5m in milestone payments.
Announcing its results in June last year, Evgen revealed a $0.5m milestone payment had been received from Stalicla, and up to $5.5m in further milestones were expected by December 31, 2024.
In a notice to the stock exchange today (February 9), Evgen stated that, following the initial $0.5m payment, it had expected a further $0.5m payment on completion of the Evgen-sponsored human volunteer Phase 1 study.
It said the Phase 1b human volunteer study was completed and the clinical study report finalised in August 2023.
As announced on 16 January 2024, Evgen said it has been working with Stalicla on delivery of the associated milestone payment.
Today, it stated that the board of Evgen believes the company has met the terms required to satisfy the milestone, according to the License Agreement, and, thus, the payment is now due.
So, to effect the payment, Evgen has taken the decision to formally implement the dispute resolution process detailed in the License Agreement, the first step of which is the issuance of a dispute notice.
As stated in the half year results in October last year, Evgen said it has not anticipated any milestone payments from Stalicla in its financial forecasting and its cash runway remains unchanged.
Evgen CEO, Dr Huw Jones, said: “We continue to work closely with our partner for a quick and amicable resolution of the current dispute.
“We have taken a prudent approach of not recognising any milestone income in our cash projections and, therefore, the cash position remains unchanged.
“In the meantime, we continue at pace with our internal programmes in oncology which are proceeding to plan.”
