Drug developer Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. of California will receive $2 million plus royalties and other benefits from WuXi Biologics in a new licensing agreement involving an antibody technology, company officials recently said.
Under the new contract, exclusive licensing rights to GLS-010 will be granted to Arcus Biosciences, a privately held firm specializing in cancer immunotherapy based in Hayward, California.
“OmniAb is a valuable and versatile technology platform and we are delighted with the continued progress being made by our licensees on a global basis,” Ligand CEO John Higgins said. “This transaction illustrates how OmniAb generates payments to Ligand while products are in discovery and development, with potential future milestones and royalty payments as those products progress to market.”
WuXi Biologics previously was engaged by Harbin Gloria Pharmaceuticals for the purpose of developing GLS-010 — an anti-PD-1 antibody — using Ligand’s OmniAb branded technology; GLS-010 is now undergoing clinical trials in China to test for its potential efficacy in cancer patients.
As a high-growth business, Ligand regularly partners with other pharmaceutical firms. Its OmniAb platform is a patented model containing three transgenic platforms for creating human antibodies. “Transgenic” denotes an entity containing genetic material into which DNA from a separate organism has been artificially introduced.
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