GSK has exercised its option for an exclusive license to a target under the respiratory diseases research collaboration with Five Prime Therapeutics, triggering a $1.5 million payment to Five Prime.
 
The collaboration, established in 2012, aims to identify new therapeutic approaches to treat refractory asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with a focus on identifying novel therapeutic targets. The collaboration was expanded in April 2014 to include two additional respiratory discovery programs and the research term was recently extended through July 2016, which GSK committed to fund.
 
GSK will have responsibility for further development and commercialization of products that incorporate or target the licensed protein target. Five Prime is eligible to receive as much as $93 million in milestone payments for each product incorporating the licensed protein. Five Prime is also eligible to receive royalties on sales.
 
The Five Prime discovery platform includes a library of more than 5,700 extracellular proteins believed to encompass all of the body’s medically important targets for protein therapeutics.
 
“GSK’s decision to exercise the option to license Five Prime intellectual property with respect to a specific respiratory target further demonstrates the productivity and versatility of Five Prime’s unique platform to identify novel targets in a wide range of major diseases,” said Lewis T. “Rusty” Williams, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Five Prime. “This is one of several potential targets that Five Prime has identified under the research collaboration with GSK, which have the potential to result in novel medicines for the treatment of respiratory disease.”