Aduro BioTech, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in cancer immunotherapy, has entered into its second agreement with Janssen Biotech Inc., part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, granting an exclusive, worldwide license to certain product candidates engineered for the treatment of lung cancer and certain other cancers based on the company's LADD immunotherapy platform. 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

Under the agreement, facilitated by the Johnson & Johnson Innovation center in California, Aduro will receive a $30-million up-front payment and is eligible to receive development, regulatory, and commercialization milestone payments up to a potential total of $817 million. In addition, Aduro is eligible to receive high single-digit to double-digit tiered royalties on worldwide net sales upon successful launch and commercialization.

Under the agreement, Janssen will have exclusive rights to develop and commercialize LADD product candidates in lung cancer and will assume responsibility for all research, development, manufacturing, regulatory and commercialization activities for the licensed products. Aduro may provide assistance in any of these areas upon request and will receive additional fees for these support activities.The transaction is subject to clearance by the US antitrust authorities under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and will become final as soon as such clearance has occurred.

In May of this year, Aduro announced its first agreement with Janssen Biotech, granting the company an exclusive, worldwide license to certain product candidates specifically engineered for the treatment of prostate cancer based on its LADD immunotherapy platform. Under that agreement, also facilitated by the Johnson & Johnson Innovation center in California, Aduro is eligible to receive up to $365 million in upfront and development and commercialization milestones

Source: Aduro Biotech