Bristol-Myers, CytomX Extend Deal To Find Probody Therapeutics To Treat Cancer

(RTTNews) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) announced Monday an expansion of its 2014 strategic collaboration with CytomX Therapeutics, Inc. (CTMX), a biopharmaceutical company developing investigational Probody therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. CytomX will receive $200 million upfront payment.

The strategic collaboration is to discover novel therapies that will include up to eight additional targets using CytomX's proprietary Probody platform.

Under the terms of the deal, CytomX will grant Bristol-Myers Squibb exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize Probody therapeutics for up to six additional oncology targets and two non-oncology targets. Bristol-Myers Squibb will make an upfront payment of $200 million to CytomX and, in addition, will provide research funding over the course of the research term.

CytomX will also be eligible to receive up to $448 million in future development, regulatory and sales milestone payments for each collaboration target, as well as tiered royalties from the mid-single digits to low-double digits on net sales of each product commercialized by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

As part of the original collaboration signed in May 2014 to discover, develop and commercialize Probody therapeutics, Bristol-Myers Squibb selected four oncology targets, including CTLA-4. In the collaboration to date, Bristol-Myers Squibb has progressed the CTLA-4 Probody therapeutic to Investigational New Drug-enabling studies and the three other programs are in the lead discovery and optimization phase.

Closing of the transaction is subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.