XOMA Royalty Purchases Mezagitamab Royalty & Milestone Rights Held by BioInvent International for up to $30 Million

XOMA Royalty Corporation and BioInvent International AB recently announced XOMA Royalty has purchased the future mezagitamab (TAK-079) royalty and milestone interests held by BioInvent for $20 million at closing, with a total transaction of up to $30 million.

“This transaction further builds the potential of XOMA Royalty’s late-stage royalty portfolio by increasing our economics in a promising Phase 3 program already in our portfolio,” said Brad Sitko, Chief Investment Officer of XOMA Royalty.  “We appreciate the longstanding relationship with BioInvent stemming from XOMA’s legacy technology, which gave rise to mezagitamab.  We are pleased to provide BioInvent non-dilutive capital to further advance its proprietary pipeline to a key inflection point.”

Martin Welschof, Chief Executive Officer of BioInvent, added “Today’s announcement highlights the value to BioInvent of our n-CoDeR platform, which has led to the identification of multiple promising therapeutic antibody drug candidates, many of which are now in mid-to late-stage clinical trials.  As well as reflecting XOMA Royalty’s expanded interest in mezagitamab, this transaction supports our strategy of creating value via partnerships and gives us a non-dilutive capital injection that bolsters our balance sheet so that we can continue to focus on advancing our own clinical drug development programs.”

The future royalty and milestone economics interest in mezagitamab originated from a 2003 cross-licensing agreement covering XOMA Royalty’s legacy bacterial protein expression technology and BioInvent’s n-CoDeR antibody library.  Under the terms of XOMA Royalty’s purchase of BioInvent’s economic interest in mezagitamab, XOMA Royalty paid $20 million to BioInvent at closing today and will pay an additional $10 million upon mezagitamab achieving a specific pre-defined regulatory milestone associated with receiving marketing approval in the IgA nephropathy indication from the US FDA.

With its existing entitlement, plus the newly acquired economics from BioInvent, XOMA Royalty will be entitled to milestones of up to $16.25 million from Takeda and mid-single digit royalties on future mezagitamab commercial sales.

In its Fiscal Year 2024 financial results, Takeda, the company developing mezagitamab, announced it has initiated a Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with immune thrombocytopenia (ITP).  Mezagitamab is a fully human immunoglobulin IgG1 monoclonal antibody (mAb) with high affinity for CD38 expressing cells (including plasmablasts, plasma cells, natural killer cells) resulting in their depletion that has the potential of becoming the best-in-class anti-CD38 mAb.

XOMA Royalty is a biotechnology royalty aggregator playing a distinctive role in helping biotech companies achieve their goal of improving human health.  XOMA Royalty acquires the potential future economics associated with pre-commercial and commercial therapeutic candidates that have been licensed to pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies.  When XOMA Royalty 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 of assets (asset defined as the right to receive potential future economics associated with the advancement of an underlying therapeutic candidate).  For more information about the Company and its portfolio, please visit www.xoma.com or follow XOMA Royalty Corporation on LinkedIn.

BioInvent International AB (Nasdaq Stockholm: BINV) is a clinical-stage biotech company that discovers and develops novel and first-in-class immuno-modulatory antibodies for cancer therapy, with currently five drug candidates in six ongoing clinical programs in Phase 1/2 trials for the treatment of hematological cancer and solid tumors.  The company’s validated, proprietary F.I.R.S.T technology platform identifies both targets and the antibodies that bind to them, generating many promising new immune-modulatory candidates to fuel the company’s own clinical development pipeline and providing licensing and partnering opportunities.

The company generates revenues from research collaborations and license agreements with multiple top-tier pharmaceutical companies, as well as from producing antibodies for third parties in the company’s fully integrated manufacturing unit. More information is available at www.bioinvent.com.