Licence deal to help improve treatment for cancer patients

Dr Alastair Smith

Wetherby-based Avacta Group has struck a license agreement with POINT Biopharma Inc to provide access to Avacta’s pre|CISION™ technology for the development of tumour-activated radiopharmaceuticals. 

POINT Biopharma is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing radioligands as precision medicines for the treatment of cancer.

Avacta’s proprietary pre|CISIONTM chemistry can be used to modify a radioligand drug to form a tumour-activated prodrug.

It has the potential to achieve better clinical outcomes for patients compared with standard radiopharmaceuticals by targeting the radioligand treatment more specifically to cancer cells.

The agreement provides POINT with an exclusive license to the pre|CISION technology for use in the first radiopharmaceutical prodrug the company intends to develop.

Under the terms of the deal, Avacta will receive an upfront fee and development milestones for the first radiopharmaceutical prodrug totalling $9.5m/£7m.

Avacta will also receive milestone payments for subsequent radiopharmaceutical prodrugs of up to $8m/£5.9m each, a royalty on sales of fibroblast activation protein (FAP)-activated radiopharmaceuticals by POINT and a percentage of any sublicensing income received by POINT.

Alastair Smith, chief executive officer of Avacta, said: “I am very pleased to have established this partnership with POINT that allows Avacta to exploit its pre|CISION platform in a therapeutic area outside of our in-house focus on chemotherapy prodrugs.

“The clinical and commercial rationale for our pre|CISION prodrug platform is to improve the safety and efficacy of many existing drugs, as well as generating a pipeline of new and novel cancer therapies.

“The in-house development of AVA6000 Pro-doxorubicin, the first of our pre|CISION chemotherapy prodrugs for which we have recently submitted a CTA filing in the UK to begin clinical trials in 2021, has already generated significant interest and this is highlighted by the agreement with POINT announced today.

“The potential of the pre|CISION platform to significantly improve outcomes for patients treated with existing cancer therapies through improved safety, tolerability and dosing regimens is enormous.”

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close