Sunnyvale, CA-based Pharmacyclics has scored a $39.5 million development deal with France's Servier.
The developer gets $11 million upfront and $4 million to support its research work over 24 months. And Servier has agreed to a schedule of $24.5 million of milestone payments to advance a small-molecule cancer drug to commercialization. The drug is being tested for solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.
"This alliance with Servier allows us to accelerate our productive discovery efforts, to expand our clinical development capabilities and potentially commercialize our unique and differentiated Pan HDAC inhibitor product outside of the United States in rapid fashion," said Robert W. Duggan, CEO of Pharmacyclics.
In a preliminary data review released yesterday, the developer announced that PCI-24781 is showing a promising response in an ongoing Phase I/II trials in refractory lymphoma and solid tumors. Pharmacyclics is planning a chemotherapy combination setting trial this summer.
- check out the Pharmacyclics release on the trial results
- read the report from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal