Rigel Pharmaceuticals acquires U.S. rights to Gavreto

Rigel Pharmaceuticals has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the U.S. rights to Gavreto – pralsetinib – from Blueprint Medicines. Gavreto is a once daily, small molecule, oral, kinase inhibitor of wild-type RET – rearranged during transfection – and oncogenic RET fusions. Gavreto is approved by the FDA for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic RET fusion-positive non-small cell lung cancer – NSCLC – as detected by an FDA approved test. Gavreto is also approved for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older with advanced or metastatic RET fusion-positive thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy and who are radioactive iodine-refractory. Discussions with the FDA regarding confirmatory requirements are ongoing. Blueprint will receive a purchase price of $15.0M, $10.0M of which is payable upon first commercial sale by Rigel and an additional $5.0M of which is payable on the first anniversary of the closing date. Blueprint is also eligible to receive up to $97.5M in future commercial milestone payments and up to $5.0M in future regulatory milestone payments, in addition to tiered royalties ranging from 10% to 30%. Patents that have issued or are expected to issue covering GAVRETO will have statutory expiration dates between 2036 and 2041. Rigel expects to complete the transition of the asset and start recognizing product sales in Q3.