Exciting announcement! On the surface, this agreement further...

Exciting announcement!

On the surface, this agreement further de-risks RAC's IP relative to the bisantrene FTO inhibition discovery by City of Hope.
The general consensus earlier was that RAC’s own IP was well protected before this agreement (“patent thicket”). So one might ask, why the milestone payments and royalties giveaway to COH? IMHO, under the surface, this could be more of a master agreement paving the way for greater collaboration with COH.

1) RAC gets access to COH's own assets (IP, research team – Prof Chen and others)
2) Possibility of further preclinical research conducted by COH under RAC
3) Down the road, possibility of phase 3 trial to be ran at COH under RAC. This does not exclude phase 2 trial option, but it would make a lot of sense since a phase 3 trial would ideally be located in the US for regulatory/approval reasons. Also, we know that trials are very expensive to run in the US, so probably focus on a phase 3 there.
4) Most importantly, this incentivises COH to work closely with RAC on developing bisantrene, and on RAC keeping the ball running to avoid penalties.

My guess is we will see more future agreements with COH in the mid-term.