Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc. Snags An Expanded Deal Worth $196.3 Million With GlaxoSmithKline

Five Prime Therapeutics, GlaxoSmithKline Ink Extended $196.3M Deal

October 24, 2014

By Krystle Vermes, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

California-based Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc. announced on Oct. 23 that it will be expanding its respiratory disease research collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline , which was originally created in 2012.

The expanded deal will have Five Prime Therapeutics receive $2 million in research funding, and it has already received $500,000 of this sum. If GlaxoSmithKline decides to license a target discovered by Five Prime during the collaboration, the company will also be able to receive up to $193 million in option exercise fees and milestone payments.

The goal of the collaboration is to identify new mechanisms for the treatment of refractory asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It was increased in April of this year to include two respiratory disease discovery programs for a six-month evaluation period. GlaxoSmithKline has now committed to these two discovery programs for an additional 18 months.

"GSK's decision to expand our collaboration speaks to the strength and versatility of our protein discovery platform to identify novel targets in a wide range of major respiratory diseases," said Aron Knickerbocker, senior vice president and chief business officer of Five Prime. "GSK is the leader in the discovery, development and commercialization of drugs for respiratory diseases and thus they are an ideal partner to have in this area of research."

Five Prime Therapeutics is dedicated to develops therapeutics using extracellular proteins as a way to explore pathways in cancer. Five Prime has entered into strategic collaborations with leading global pharmaceutical companies and has multiple product candidates in clinical and late preclinical development.

"We are pleased to expand this highly collaborative research alliance with Five Prime to discover novel targets that have the potential to result in new medicines for the treatment of respiratory disease," said Edith Hessel, vice president and head of the Refractory Respiratory Inflammation Discovery Performance Unit at GlaxoSmithKline. "We are hopeful these discoveries will lead to innovative new therapies that will benefit patients with uncontrolled respiratory disease."

GlaxoSmithKline has more than 99,000 employees across 115 countries. The company is develops vaccines, medicines and consumer healthcare products.

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