Ablynx has achieved an initial discovery milestone with a multi-specific nanobody construct as part of its collaboration with Novo Nordisk, triggering a €1 million milestone payment to Ablynx.
Under the terms of the agreement with Novo Nordisk, signed on 25 November 2015, Ablynx received an upfront license fee of €5 million and will receive up to €4 million in research funding during the initial 3 year research term of the collaboration.
In addition, Ablynx is eligible to receive potential development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to €182 million plus tiered royalties on the annual net sales of any products resulting from the collaboration. Novo Nordisk is responsible for the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of any products resulting from this agreement.
Dr Edwin Moses, CEO of Ablynx, commented: “Our proprietary Nanobody technology platform is ideally suited to develop multi-specific nanobody candidates that address multiple targets in a single drug molecule. The achievement of our first milestone just one year after we entered into the collaboration with Novo Nordisk is an endorsement of the power of our platform to rapidly generate novel, potent drug candidates against disease targets, which are difficult to address with other technologies."
"We are looking forward to further advancing the programme and the nanobody, potentially progressing towards clinical studies in 2018," he added.