AZ inks new deal with Starpharma update and ASCO

Between 29 May - 31 May ASCO 2020 will be conducting a virtual conference due to COVID - 19

Last year AstraZeneca inked a new deal with Starpharma

Details below

Option agreement with AZN on marketed oncology drug

SPL entered into an option agreement with its long standing partner AstraZeneca for a DEP enhanced version of one of AZN’s marketed oncology drugs in early June 2019. SPL has been conducting pre-clinical studies on this compound, which once completed, AZN has the option to license it (at pre-agreed deal terms which include undisclosed milestones and royalties) and an option exercise fee of US$5m. Expectations that the cost of these pre-clinical studies would be $1-2m and be completed in less than a year. SPL has had more control on speed of preclinical development given its running the trials vs. the experience had with AZN with the first deal and AZD0466 product. SPL can scale up manufacturing of drug to support these studies and future clinical trials in-house to shorten timelines. The deal terms could be similar to the first deal between AZN/SPL, with value likely skewed towards the royalty potential from what is a blockbuster oncology drug from AZN’s stable.
This further deepening of ties between SPL/AZN, bodes well for their long term collaboration and AZN’s interest in SPL and its DEP platform. The strong endorsement from AZN, provides further validation for the DEP platform and also highlights its broad utility to a company like AZN (novel pipeline drugs and life cycle management of existing marketed drugs which are facing patent expiry and generic sales erosion)

Well the year is up and ASCO 2020 is almost upon us (two weeks time)

Some exciting announcements pending

Starpharma has also indicated finalisation of 2 agreements with partners picked up at an earlier conference in January 2020. The question is..........are these the undisclosed partners Starpharma has been dealing with over the past few years

Stay tuned