Avixgen, a subsidiary of Korean biotechnology company Dx and Vx, has signed a licensing-out agreement worth approximately USD 360 million with a US biotechnology company for its next-generation drug delivery platform, ACP (Advanced Cell Penetrating Peptide). Avixgen is a drug development company in which Dx and Vx holds a 66.2 percent stake.    

Under the agreement, the US biotechnology company (the name of which remains undisclosed) is granted a limited exclusive license of ACP patents, allowing it to apply and develop them only for its own drug development candidates.      

Avixgen is set to receive a total of USD 360 million in upfront and development milestone payments from the partner company, with royalties for 10 years after commercialisation.

The ACP platform is a peptide-based drug delivery technology designed with a unique structure, enabling efficient and stable delivery of drugs into tissues and cells either by conjugation or simple mixing with various drugs.

In particular, preclinical animal studies successfully penetrated the blood–brain barrier (BBB), known as one of the greatest obstacles in drug delivery, using ACP-conjugated drugs, and secured results that improved motor function in damaged animals. This is evaluated as presenting a practical solution to the development of CNS (central nervous system) targeted therapeutics, which has been difficult to achieve with existing drug delivery technologies.

This agreement transfers only a limited portion of ACP’s scalability. BBB patents are also excluded from the contract.

Sung Jun Han, CEO of Avixgen, said, “This global licensing-out agreement is the first for our company and represents the fruition of years of continuous research and development efforts. We thank our partner for recognising the value of our technology, and we expect to accelerate global market entry and further collaboration expansion by using this contract as a stepping stone.”

Kevin Kwon, CEO of Dx and Vx, described this deal as their second global licensing-out success.

“This agreement is expected to have a very positive impact not only on licensing discussions for Avixgen's ACP platform-based BBB penetration technology but also on other pipeline licensing discussions of Dx and Vx,” he added.