License to Pill: Biotech and pharma deals from Aug. 28-Sept. 10

Roche Holding AG's latest bids to expand its pipeline of gene therapies for both cancer and Huntington's disease featured among the largest licensing deals for the first two weeks of September.

As part of a deal to develop "off-the-shelf" cell therapies aimed at up to five cancer targets, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant's U.S.-based Genentech Inc. unit will pay British biotech Adaptimmune Therapeutics PLC $150 million up front and potentially over $3 billion in milestone payments.

"We believe allogeneic cell therapies could be a game-changing approach for developing personalized therapy platforms based on individual cancer patients' unique needs," James Sabry, global head of Pharma Partnering at Roche, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the company's Spark Therapeutics Inc. unit announced a deal with NeuExCell Therapeutics Inc. worth up to $190 million in combined up-front and milestone payments to use the Pennsylvania-based biotech's neuro-regenerative gene therapy platform to develop a treatment for Huntington's disease. Roche's trial of a different drug, called tominersen, as a potential treatment for the inherited neurodegenerative disease was halted in March after a review of the study's findings.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will pay $20 million up front to Evotec SE to develop another potential neurodegenerative therapy, called EVT8683. The small molecule targets a key cellular stress response that holds great promise in various neurodegenerative indications and is ready to enter clinical development, Hamburg, Germany-based Evotec said.

Eli Lilly and Co. will pay ProQR Therapeutics NV $50 million as a combined up-front payment and equity investment to develop and commercialize new medicines for genetic disorders of the liver and nervous system. As part of the collaboration, which will use ProQR's Axiomer RNA editing platform, the Leiden, Netherlands-based biotech is eligible to receive up to $1.25 billion in milestone payments.

Innovent Biologics Inc. will pay fellow Chinese pharmaceutical company GenFleet Therapeutics (Shanghai) Inc. $22 million up front to develop and commercialize GenFleet's antitumor drug GFH925 in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, with additional opt-in global rights.

Another Chinese company, Bio-Thera Solutions Ltd., will receive undisclosed up-front and milestone payments from Novartis AG unit Sandoz International GmbH for the license to BAT1706, a biosimilar of Roche's blockbuster cancer drug Avastin — which brought in $5.4 billion in worldwide sales for 2020. Biosimilars are copies of biologic drugs that are already available in the market to treat various diseases and conditions.

Japan's Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd. will make an up-front payment of €20 million to Netherlands-based AM-Pharma B.V. to develop and commercialize ilofotase alfa, which is in a late-stage trial for sepsis-associated acute kidney injury.