30 January, 2020
In the past few months, Antengene Corporation Co., Ltd. (“Antengene”) entered into a licensing agreement with AstraZeneca AB (“AstraZeneca”) regarding the drug AZD0364, which is an innovative drug that has already been developed at the clinical phase by AstraZeneca. Under this agreement, Antengene obtained an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize AZD0364.
Antengene is an innovative clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and sale of new drugs. Targeting the unsatisfied medical demand in Asia, Antengene strives to provide patients leading and cutting-edge anticancer drugs. One of the most recent milestones for the company was on the 13th April 2017 when Celgene Corporation, a world-leading biopharmaceutical company, became a long-term strategic partner of Antengene. The other party to the transaction, AstraZeneca, is an innovation-oriented worldwide renowned global biopharmaceutical company.
JunHe was engaged by Antengene to perform due diligence concerning the Intellectual Property (“IP”) rights involved in the project as well as to revise and negotiate the licensing agreement. In particular, JunHe assisted in determining whether the licensed innovative drug could be commercialized freely by Antengene, which patents were owned by AstraZeneca and the degree of protection of such patents.
Key achievements of the project can be summarized below:
1. Within just three weeks, JunHe completed the investigation on the free implementation of the licensed innovative drug within the key territory, as well as the IP due diligence on the patents owned by AstraZeneca, laying a solid foundation for the commencement of negotiation.
2. The license agreed upon grants an exclusive worldwide license, involving multiple jurisdictions with great differences in their medical markets. JunHe successfully handled the complex issues that arose from this, striving to achieve greater benefits for the client based on its extensive experience and understanding of the medical market of each jurisdiction.
JunHe’s high quality, rigorous and efficient professional legal services provided throughout the project were highly regarded by the client. This project marks another successful cooperation between Antengene and JunHe after they assisted Antengene to enter into strategic cooperation with Celgene Corporation and Karyopharm Therapeutics.
The leading partner of this project is Mr. ZHU, Jian (James J. Zhu, Ph.D.).
