NEW YORK – Jazz Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday said it will acquire Redx Pharma's preclinical KRAS inhibitor program in a deal worth up to $880 million.
Dublin-based Jazz will pay Redx $10 million upfront for the KRAS program, and Redx will be eligible for up to $870 million in development, regulatory, and sales milestone payments along with tiered, mid-single-digit percentage royalties on future net sales.
Redx's KRAS program includes G12D selective and pan-KRAS molecules. The two firms will collaborate to advance the KRAS candidates through investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies. Then, Jazz will be responsible for all clinical development, regulatory, manufacturing, and commercialization activities for the candidates.
Under a separate agreement signed in parallel with the acquisition agreement, Jazz said it will pay Redx to conduct research and preclinical development to complete IND-enabling studies for both KRAS programs.
"KRAS is a well-validated oncology target, and there remains a high unmet need for innovation in this area based on challenges in developing molecules to target specific KRAS mutations," Robert Iannone, global head of R&D at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement. "Redx has discovered a number of preclinical KRAS candidates, and we plan to leverage our collective oncology development expertise to identify and advance the most promising molecules toward the clinic."
Redx, headquartered in Alderley Park, UK, sold a pan-RAF inhibitor program to Jazz in 2019. Jazz is now studying one of the candidates within that program, JZP815, in a Phase I trial involving patients with solid tumors harboring certain mutations in the MAPK pathway.