Purple Biotech enters agreement to acquire Immunorizon

Purple Biotech announced that it has entered into an agreement for the acquisition of Immunorizon. The acquisition will provide Purple Biotech with an expanded portfolio of investigational tri-specific antibody compounds that target multiple antigens and offer the potential to further expand to additional targets. Immunorizon’s lead asset is a conditionally-activated tri-specific antibody that engages both T cells and NK cells to mount a strong, localized immune response within the tumor microenvironment. The third arm of the lead compound specifically targets the Tumor Associated Antigen 5T4, that is expressed in a variety of solid tumors and is correlated with advanced disease, increased invasiveness and poor clinical outcomes. 5T4 is a well-known target that has been validated by multiple pre-clinical and clinical programs. "We are delighted to add Immunorizon’s portfolio of tri-specific antibodies to our drug development pipeline," said Gil Efron, CEO of Purple Biotech. "The acquisition of these assets highly fits our strategy of expanding our pipeline, and we believe that the acquired technology platform has the potential to expand to multiple additional development programs. This new technology is differentiated not only by the combination of the NK and T cell engagement, but also by the conditional activation at the tumor microenvironment, which we believe provides an opportunity for better therapeutic outcomes for cancer patients. Bi-specifics as a class have undergone multiple iterations of technological improvements that have culminated in a basket of approved and/or clinically de-risked assets with several recent industry partnerships that have formed around such platforms. Novel multi-specifics have seen increasing industry attention and we are excited with our first step into this field. We believe that we will be able to leverage the knowledge and expertise we have gained over the years through both preclinical and clinical development. We expect to advance the first of the newly acquired assets to an IND submission in approximately two years in parallel to our ongoing promising clinical programs from which we expect to report clinical data during this year." Purple Biotech is acquiring 100% of the shares of Immunorizon Ltd., a privately held, VC-backed biopharmaceutical company, in exchange for an aggregate upfront payment of $3.5M in cash and an aggregate $3.5M in American Depository Shares, at a price per ADS equal to the NASDAQ volume-weighted average price of the Company’s ADSs for the 60-day period preceding the execution date of the agreement. Additional long-term development, regulatory and sales milestones are set at an aggregate amount of $94M, with royalties of low single digit out of net sales. The accumulated transaction payments, excluding the upfront payment, will not exceed $100M.