BDW helps negotiate IP rights to lymphoma treatment
Blake Dawson Waldon has assisted the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to acquire exclusive rights across several Australasian and Asian countries to develop,
Blake Dawson Waldon has assisted the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to acquire exclusive rights across several Australasian and Asian countries to develop, market and sell a new treatment for low-grade non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
ANSTO will also have co-exclusive rights to supply BEXXAR to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
BDW’s team was led by Ben Miller from its Sydney IP group. His team included partners Peter Armitage (competition) and Rehana Box (insurance), as well as lawyers Melinda Upton and Olivia Stuckey (intellectual property) and patent attorney Allen Chan.
Corixa will supply ANSTO with cold antibody and ANSTO will perform radio labelling at its Lucas Heights facility in southern Sydney.
“Radio-immunotherapies are a very exciting development and involve particular legal and commercial challenges to bring to the market,” Miller said.
“In this case, the BEXXAR regimen consists of a dose of a particular anti-CD20 antibody, together with a radio labelled dose of the same antibody to ensure that each patient receives an individually tailored dose.”
BDW advised on the transaction structure, patent licensing and regulatory data access as well as competition and trade practices issues. The firm also drafted and negotiated the transaction documents with Corixa’s legal team and senior management in the US.
The BEXXAR regimen is a treatment that can be used on non-Hodgkins lymphoma sufferers for whom other treatments have failed.
BEXXAR was approved by the US FDA last year and ANSTO Radiophamaceuticals and Industrials will now take the product through the regulatory process in Australia.
The firm said the deal is the latest in a global network of licence deals for the drug. As well as a co-marketing deal in the US with GlaxoSmithKline, Corixa has other licensees of BEXXAR in Europe (Amersham) and Canada (GlaxoSmithKline).