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Telix Pharmaceuticals Acquires Early-Stage Assets From ImaginAb, Shares Late-Stage Pipeline Updates

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Radioactive drug

NEW YORK – Telix Pharmaceuticals on Monday announced plans to acquire several assets from ImaginAb, including antibodies designed to target DLL3 and integrin αvβ6 as well as several other novel targets. Telix plans to pair these antibodies with radioisotopes including alpha emitters as radio-labeled diagnostics and therapeutics. 

Along with this asset deal, Melbourne, Australia-based Telix is also acquiring a California-based research facility from ImaginAb and the radiopharmaceutical development team that staffs it. Telix is paying $45 million in exchange for the assets and up to $185 million in the future, contingent on the agents reaching key developmental and commercial milestones. If these agents are commercialized, Telix would pay low-single-digit royalties on net sales to ImaginAb. 

Beyond the acquisition, Telix shared updates on its later-stage pipeline during the JP Morgan Healthcare conference on Wednesday evening. During 2025, the firm is expecting to see three new diagnostic product launches in the US and several outside the US. 

In the US, the firm is anticipating that the Food and Drug Administration will approve TLX250-CDx, a diagnostic imaging agent for patients with kidney cancer; TLX007-CDx, a new, more easily produced diagnostic imaging agent for prostate cancer; and TLX101-CDx, a diagnostic imaging agent for glioma. Outside the US, the firm expects to net in 2025 European, UK, and Brazilian approval for Illuccix (TLX591-CDx), which was approved in the US in 2021.

To accompany each of these diagnostic imaging agents, the firm is ultimately eyeing therapeutics, but they are "one step behind" the diagnostics agents in their development, Telix CEO Chris Behrenbruch said during Telix's JP Morgan presentation. 

"We won't achieve these inflection points commercially for the therapeutics business without the precision medicine business coming in before it," Behrenbruch said. "[The diagnostics] pave the way for the customer relationships that define the supply chain and validates the go-to-market strategy for the therapeutics. They're incredibly entwined from a financial performance perspective." 

In the therapeutic space, the firm is gearing up to move three assets into pivotal trials before the end of the year. These include TLX591 (177Lu rosopatamab tetraxetan) in prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-expressing prostate cancer; TLX250 (177Lu-girentuximab) in carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX)-expressing renal cell carcinoma; and TLX101 (131I-IPA) in L-type amino acid transporter (LAT)-expressing brain cancer. 

Telix is conducting the global Phase III ProstACT trial of TLX591 and is expecting a data readout from part one of that trial during the first half of 2025. According to Behrenbruch, TLX591 could offer prostate cancer patients an improvement over existing PSMA-targeting therapy due to its simpler, two-dose regimen and limited off-target side effects. 

For TLX250, the firm is moving into a pivotal trial in clear-cell renal cell carcinoma. Telix submitted an application to the FDA for approval of the companion imaging agent toward the end of 2024. 

"Our imaging agent will pave the way for the usage of this therapy in clear-cell renal cancer, but the target, CAIX, is really a pan-cancer target," Behrenbruch said. "We see a lot of potential to move this into areas of unmet need, [and] there's the potential to run basket trials where we can do image-based patient selection. What I would love to see happen for radiopharma is that we start to run trials where the selection is based on target selection by imaging and [is] solid tumor-agnostic." 

With its brain cancer therapeutic TLX101, the firm is in the process of discussing the design of the pivotal trial with the FDA. "We had a pre-IND meeting with the FDA before Christmas where they expressed quite a bit of enthusiasm for our proposed study design, so I'm excited to move this toward late-stage trials in 2025," Behrenbruch said. The FDA is currently reviewing Telix's application for approval of the diagnostic counterpart and is expected to decide whether to approve the agent by April 26, 2025. 

Beyond prostate, kidney, and brain cancer, Telix is also planning to begin evaluating two muscular skeletal agents: TLX66 (90Y-besilesomab), which is a CD66-targeted agent meant to help condition patients' bone marrow, and TLX090 (153Sm-DOTMP), which is designed to palliatively target bone metastases. 

Ultimately, Telix's chief focus as a radiopharmaceutical company is ensuring that it can successfully deliver its products to patients without bumping up against the logistical hurdles that have, at times, limited patient access to these therapies. On the pricing and reimbursement side, Behrenbruch talked up the positive implications of a change announced by the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) toward the end of 2024. 

In a final rule, CMS said that it would pay separately for specialized diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals that do not have pass-through payment coverage status and have a mean unit cost (MUC), calculated with hospital claims data, that exceeds $630 per day. 

"It was a great outcome for the whole industry," he said. "CMS has now defined a pathway for reimbursement post-transitional pass-through approval." 

As for its financial performance, Telix said this week that its unaudited full-year revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $142 million, which represents an increase of 46 percent from the prior year's fourth quarter. For full-year 2024, the firm brought in $517 million, which was a 55 percent increase from 2023. Although these figures are unaudited and preliminary, Telix said the earnings remained in line with guidance and that most of the revenue came from sales of the PSMA PET imaging diagnostic, Illuccix. 

Telix plans to share revenue guidance for the full 2025 calendar year on Feb. 20. 

"We are well positioned for significant expansion, including planned launches of multiple imaging products in key markets and advancing late-stage therapeutic assets into pivotal trials," Behrenbruch said in a statement. "2025 is shaping up to be a transformative year for Telix."