XOMA Acquires Royalty & Milestone License to Ebopiprant, a Preterm Labor Asset, Being Developed by Organon

XOMA Corporation recently announced it has acquired all rights and title to ebopiprant held by ObsEva for $15 million plus certain earn-out payments. XOMA has assumed the ebopiprant intellectual property (IP) estate and all license agreements, including the 2021 exclusive license agreement from ObsEva to Organon related to the development and commercialization of ebopiprant.

“We are very pleased to add ebopiprant to XOMA’s royalty and milestone portfolio. Preterm labor is extremely stressful for expectant parents and their families. The costs to care for premature babies can quickly escalate to hundreds of thousands of dollars, resulting in long-term financial distress for many families,” said Jim Neal, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of XOMA. “The economics in the ebopiprant license acquisition have the potential to deliver significant returns to XOMA and our stockholders from the clinical development milestones alone. We wish Organon, a global women’s health company, success in its development activities with ebopiprant.”

Under the terms of the agreement, XOMA has acquired all rights to ebopiprant held by ObsEva, including the Organon/ObsEva license agreement and the IP associated with the asset. XOMA will now be entitled to receive up to $475 million in development, regulatory, and sales-based milestone payments under the ObsEva/Organon license agreement. XOMA will pay to ObsEva a portion of the development and regulatory milestones, as well as certain sales milestones, up to $98 million. Upon commercialization, XOMA will receive royalties that range from low- to mid-teens from Organon and will make a mid-single-digit royalty payment to Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Ebopiprant (OBE022) was licensed by ObsEva from Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2015. ObsEva previously announced positive results from PROLONG Part B, a 113-patient Phase 2a proof-of-concept, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in women experiencing spontaneous preterm labor that compared atosiban (ex-US standard of care) plus ebopiprant versus atosiban plus placebo for 7 days. In the study, ebopiprant plus atosiban reduced delivery in singleton pregnancies at 48 hours after the start of dosing by 55% compared to atosiban plus placebo. Overall, 12.5% of women receiving ebopiprant plus atosiban delivered within 48 hours of starting treatment compared to 21.8% receiving atosiban plus placebo (OR 90% CI: 0.52 (0.22, 1.23)). The incidence of maternal, fetal, and neonatal adverse events were comparable between both the ebopiprant and placebo groups.

XOMA is a biotechnology royalty aggregator playing a distinctive role in helping biotech companies achieve their goal of improving human health. XOMA acquires the potential future economics associated with pre-commercial therapeutic candidates that have been licensed to pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. When XOMA acquires the future economics, the seller receives non-dilutive, non-recourse funding they can use to advance their internal drug candidate(s) or for general corporate purposes. The company has an extensive and growing portfolio with more than 70 assets (asset defined as the right to receive potential future economics associated with the advancement of an underlying therapeutic candidate). For more information, visit www.xoma.com.