ProMetic Life Sciences Inc. has announced, the signature of a license agreement and associated services and supply agreements with Nabi Biopharmaceuticals for the use of ProMetic's Mimetic Ligands technology in the manufacturing of selected plasma, derived hyperimmune products.
Over the term of the license agreement, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals will pay ProMetic milestone payments upon the filing of a Biologic License Application (BLA) and upon licensure of hyper immune products made using ProMetic's technology. Nabi Biopharmaceuticals also will pay royalties on the sale of these products. The milestone payments could reach US $18 million if Nabi Biopharmaceuticals develops and obtains licensure of all the products that are the subject of the license agreement.
Nabi Biopharmaceuticals will use ProMetic's Mimetic Ligands technology to extract directly from hyper immune plasma the valuable hyper immunes necessary to fight infections such as hepatitis C, or infections caused by staphylococcus.
ProMetic has developed and manufactures robust affinity separation materials and developed processes that can be used to extract and purify biomolecules, at very high yields. This is achieved by use of small chemical affinity ligands designed to specifically bind the target biomolecule, in this case, hyper immune antibodies.
Because of their use in the production of therapeutics, ProMetic's affinity products are manufactured to strict quality standards at the company's GMP compliant manufacturing facility located on the Isle of Man.
"We are pleased to partner with one of the world's leaders in the field of blood-derived products. Nabi HB has over 85 per cent of the anti-hepatitis B immunoglobulin US market for the prevention of hepatitis B re-infection in hepatitis B positive liver transplant patients. We are looking forward to helping, through our technology, in the treatment of diseases for which there are few options available." stated Mr Pierre Laurin, ProMetic's President and CEO.
"We expect our partnership with ProMetic will allow us to develop our product pipeline with higher yields and fewer processing steps," said Raafat Fahim PhD, Senior Vice President, Research, Technical and Production Operations, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals.
In addition, under separate services and supply agreements signed by the parties, ProMetic will provide technology transfer and support to Nabi Biopharmaceuticals for the use of the licensed Mimetic Ligands technology, as well as the supply of resins required for the licensed process.
Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, based in Boca Raton, Florida, operates a state of the art-manufacturing facility and nine plasma collection centres that provide the high titer antibody plasma used as raw material for the manufacture of hyperimmune products.