International law firm Simmons & Simmons has advised biopharmaceutical company Ascendis Pharma on its multi-million dollar licensing deal with Novo Nordisk.
Under the deal, leading global healthcare company Novo Nordisk is granted exclusive world-wide rights to Ascendis’ TransCon Technology – an innovative produg and sustained release platform – to develop its GLP-1 products, as well as its other proprietary products that target metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.
In exchange, Ascendis will be eligible to receive total payments of up to $285 million in upfront, development, and regulatory milestone payments for the lead program, a once-monthly GLP-1 receptor agonist that will initially target obesity and type 2 diabetes.
For each additional metabolic or cardiovascular disease product candidate, Ascendis will be eligible to receive payments of up to $77.5 million in development and regulatory milestone payments. Ascendis will also be eligible to receive sales-based milestone payments and tiered royalties on global net sales.
The closing of this transaction is subject to receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the parties are seeking to close before the end of 2024.
The Simmons team advising Ascendis Pharma was led by intellectual property licensing partner Michael Gavey, supported by Fred Nicolle (managing associate) and Tom Wales (supervising associate).
Commenting on the deal, Michael Gavey said: “This is an exciting deal focussed on developing Novo Nordisk’s therapies using Ascendis’ innovative platform for the benefit of patients. It has been a pleasure to bring our leading health and life sciences licensing expertise and advise the Ascendis team on another major transaction.”
