Sidley advised Nurix Therapeutics, Inc., a company researching novel therapies that control degradation of disease-causing proteins, in a global strategic collaboration with Sanofi to discover, develop and commercialize a pipeline of innovative targeted protein degradation drugs for patients with challenging diseases in multiple therapeutic areas.
Under the multi-year collaboration, Nurix will utilize its proprietary drug discovery platform, DELigase™, which integrates its DNA-encoded libraries (DEL) and its unparalleled portfolio of E3 ligases to create small molecules designed to induce degradation of three specified drug targets, with an option by Sanofi to expand to a total of five targets. Sanofi will have exclusive rights and be responsible for clinical development and commercialization of drug candidates resulting from the work while Nurix will retain the option to co-develop and co-promote up to two products in the U.S. under certain conditions. The collaboration excludes Nurix’s lead degradation programs for which Nurix retains all rights.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nurix will receive an upfront payment of US$55 million and subsequent payments upon expansion of the number of targets to be included in the collaboration. In addition, Nurix will be eligible to receive up to approximately US$2.5 billion in total payments based on the successful completion of certain research, pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory and sales milestones. For those programs that Nurix exercises its option to co-develop and co-promote, the parties will split U.S. profits and losses evenly and Nurix will be eligible to receive royalties on ex-U.S. net sales on all optioned products.
The Sidley team was led by Technology and IP Transactions partners Tom Duley and Stephen Abreu (San Francisco) and included Restructuring partner Matthew A. Clemente (Chicago); Antitrust senior counsel Marc E. Raven (Chicago); FDA Regulatory Counsel and Special Projects Coordinator Susan Stolzer (New York); Antitrust associate Joseph V. Coniglio (Washington, D.C.); and Technology and IP Transactions associate Valerie Truong (Palo Alto).
Additional details may be found in the press release.
