Coley and GSK amend VaxImmune deal

US biopharmaceuticals company Coley Pharmaceuticals, a specialist in the discovery and development of toll-like receptor-based therapeutics, says that it has amended the terms of its license agreement with UK drug major GlaxoSmithKline. The revised alliance allows the Massachusetts-headquartered firm to establish additional non-exclusive licenses with other vaccine makers for the use of its product, VaxImmune, in the development of infectious disease therapies.

The two firms originally entered into a worldwide co-exclusive licensing deal, which covered the use of the VaxImmune adjuvant in certain therapeutic and prophylactic therapies for infectious diseases in 1998 (Marketletters passim). They explained that the amendment, which does not modify the agreement in relation to GSK's cancer vaccine development program, involves the conversion of certain co-exclusive licenses to non-exclusive status in return for a $17.4 million reduction in the potential regulatory and developmental milestone payments from the $74.0 million that the original deal stipulated.

Steve Bernitz, Coley's senior vice president of business and commercial development, said that the increasing use of adjuvant technologies in vaccine development has led to a greater demand for such products. He added that "amending our agreement with GSK allows us the flexibility to further capitalize on the value of VaxImmune."