DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE received $100 million for a portion of its interest in royalties related to its Programmed Death Ligand-1 intellectual property.
CPPIB Credit Europe S.à r.l., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, paid $100 million upfront, and has committed to pay up to $68 million in additional payments, subject to certain conditions.
“This transaction provides essential funds to support critical cancer research at Dana-Farber,” said Edward Benz Jr., president and CEO of Dana-Farber.
“Immunotherapy is one of the most promising areas of oncology research, and we have been making great progress with checkpoint inhibitors based on discoveries in our laboratories over the last few decades,” he said. “These license agreements reflect Dana-Farber’s efforts to make this technology broadly available by non-exclusively licensing to leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies engaged in developing immunotherapy products using PD-L1 antibodies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disease.”
The foundational research for PD-L1s took place at Dana-Farber in the 1990s, led by Gordon Freeman, who discovered that a particular protein carried on the surface of many cancer cells and some normal cells helps the cells avoid being attacked by the immune system’s T cells. Therapeutic antibodies targeting PD-1 have already made a notable impact on cancer treatment, and the first anti-PD-L1 antibody drug was approved by the FDA this year.
