Argenx Receives Second Preclinical Milestone Payment in Collaboration With LEO Pharma

Argenx recently announced the achievement of the second of two preclinical milestones in connection with its collaboration with LEO Pharma.

“Our collaboration with LEO Pharma continues to be highly productive with the announcement of this most recent preclinical milestone. This achievement is the second of two success-based preclinical milestones with the first having been received last year. We continue to be excited about the potential of ARGX-112 in inflammatory skin diseases and are optimistic that the collaboration may yield a clinical program in the near future,” commented Tim Van Hauwermeiren, CEO at argenx.

In May 2015, argenx entered into a research collaboration and exclusive license option agreement with LEO Pharma to develop and commercialize ARGX-112, a novel antibody program discovered by argenx using its SIMPLE Antibody technology. Under the terms of that agreement, argenx is responsible for conducting ARGX-112 research and development activities up to a first filing by LEO Pharma for clinical trial application approval. Based on its well-differentiated therapeutic profile, ARGX-112 is anticipated to have exciting development potential for inflammatory skin disorders such as atopic dermatitis.

argenx has granted LEO an exclusive option to obtain a worldwide, exclusive license to the ARGX-112 program, to develop and commercialize licensed products for inflammatory skin disorders. In addition to the upfront and first preclinical milestone payments already received, argenx may receive further regulatory and clinical milestone payments up to approximately €100mm as well as royalties on net sales of any products.

argenx is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a deep pipeline of differentiated antibody-based therapies for the treatment of severe autoimmune diseases and cancer. We are focused on developing product candidates with the potential to be either first-in-class against novel targets or best-in-class against known, but complex, targets in order to treat diseases with a significant unmet medical need. Our ability to execute on this focus is enabled by our suite of differentiated technologies. Our SIMPLE Antibody Platform, based on the powerful llama immune system, allows us to exploit novel and complex targets, and our three antibody engineering technologies are designed to enable us to expand the therapeutic index of our product candidates. For more information, visit www.argenx.com.