Aduro Biotech, Inc., a clinical-stage immunotherapy company, announced that it has received a milestone payment from Janssen Biotech, Inc. for Aduro’s submission of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the US Food and Drug Administration for ADU-741, a LADD immunotherapy product candidate for the treatment of prostate cancer.

The IND will enable Janssen, Aduro’s license partner for ADU-741, to initiate a multi-center phase 1 trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of intravenous administration of ADU-741 in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

“We are very pleased with our productive partnerships with Janssen,” said Stephen T. Isaacs, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Aduro.

“ADU-741 for prostate cancer is the second LADD-based therapy that Janssen plans to advance into the clinic, in addition to ADU-214 for lung cancer. We believe this further validates the power of combining our innovative LADD technology platform with Janssen’s expertise in oncology clinical development. We look forward to continued development of these compounds in collaboration with Janssen, while at the same time, progressing our internal pipeline of immuno-oncology therapeutics toward commercialization.”

In May 2014, Aduro entered into an agreement granting Janssen an exclusive, worldwide license to certain product candidates specifically engineered for the treatment of prostate cancer based on Aduro’s novel LADD immunotherapy platform. Under the agreement facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Aduro received an upfront payment, milestone payments associated with submission of the IND, and is eligible to receive future development, regulatory and commercialisation milestone payments up to a potential total of $346 million as well as royalties on worldwide net sales upon successful launch and commercialisation.

LADD is Aduro’s proprietary platform of live-attenuated double-deleted Listeria monocytogenes strains that have been engineered to induce a potent innate immune response and to express tumor-associated antigens to induce tumor-specific T cell-mediated immunity.