Ligand Receives $4 Million From Expansion of Two OmniAb License Agreements

Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated recently announced that two recent events relating to its OmniAb platform generated $4 million in combined payments due to Ligand. One event relates to a current OmniAb licensee exercising its option to expand access to the OmniAb platform, and the second event relates to Wuxi sub-licensing Chinese rights to an IND-ready antibody it discovered with the OmniAb platform.

In exercising its option, an OmniAb licensee broadened its access to the OmniAb platform by adding OmniFlic, a transgenic rat technology with a fixed light chain used to generate bispecific antibodies. Prior to the option exercise, this licensee’s access to the OmniAb technology was limited to OmniRat. The option exercise triggered a payment to Ligand. Additionally, any approved antibody therapeutics generated utilizing OmniFlic will be subject to milestones and royalties to Ligand.

Under the existing license agreement with Wuxi, antibodies developed using the OmniAb platform and subsequently out-licensed for use in China trigger a payment to Ligand, in addition to potential royalties on product sales. Wuxi recently out-licensed the Chinese rights to an undisclosed IND-ready antibody it discovered with the OmniAb platform and its sub-licensee will be responsible for all future costs related to the program.

“These recent events show the meaningful progress with two of our OmniAb partnerships, and illustrate the focus and ongoing efforts by OmniAb partners to advance their OmniAb pipelines,” said John Higgins, Chief Executive Officer of Ligand. “These transactions also demonstrate the potential for cash flows available to Ligand during the product development period, driving near-term financial benefit from the OMT acquisition.”

Including these payments, Ligand anticipates total revenue for the second quarter of 2016 to be approximately $19 million.

OmniAb includes three transgenic animal platforms for producing mono- and bispecific human therapeutic antibodies. OmniRat is the industry’s first human monoclonal antibody technology based on rats. It has a complete immune system with a diverse antibody repertoire and generates antibodies with human idiotypes as effectively as wild-type animals make rat antibodies. OmniMouse is a transgenic mouse that complements OmniRat and expands epitope coverage. OmniFlic is an engineered rat with a fixed light chain for development of bispecific, fully human antibodies. The three platforms use patented technology, have broad freedom to operate, and deliver fully human antibodies with high affinity, specificity, expression, solubility, and stability.

Ligand is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing or acquiring technologies that help pharmaceutical companies discover and develop medicines. Its business model creates value for stockholders by providing a diversified portfolio of biotech and pharmaceutical product revenue streams that are supported by an efficient and low corporate cost structure. Our goal is to offer investors an opportunity to participate in the promise of the biotech industry in a profitable, diversified, and lower-risk business than a typical biotech company. Our business model is based on doing what we do best: drug discovery, early-stage drug development, product reformulation and partnering. We partner with other pharmaceutical companies to leverage what they do best (late-stage development, regulatory management and commercialization) to ultimately generate our revenue. Ligand’s Captisol platform technology is a patent-protected, chemically modified cyclodextrin with a structure designed to optimize the solubility and stability of drugs. OmniAb is a patent-protected transgenic animal platform used in the discovery of fully human mono-and bispecific therapeutic antibodies. Ligand has established multiple alliances, licenses, and other business relationships with the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Celgene, Gilead, Janssen, Baxter International, and Eli Lilly.