Selvita to cash in €90m in Menarini deal

According to the agreement, Selvita will grant Italian Menarini Group an exclusive license to further research, develop, manufacture and commercialise SEL24 worldwide. Selvita's first deal for a proprietary clinical-stage asset brought an upfront payment of €4.8m to the company that runs a dual drug discovery/proprietary pipeline business model. Potential future milestone payments sum up to €89.1m. The companies did not specifiy the exact amount of the single to low-double digit royalties and cost sharing they have agreed upon. Selvita stocks were up +65% on the morning after the announcement of the deal.

Berlin-Chemie Menarini will take the responsibility for commercialisation of SEL24 while Selvita announced it will continue a Phase I/II study kicked of in January 2017 with the oral dual PIM/FLT3 kinase inhibitor. The study will be be taken over by Menarini at the end of the year. SEL24 will be investigated in patients with treatment refractive acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) but, according to Selvita, preclinical data suggest potential activity in other hematological malignancies and solid tumors. The collaboration includes collaboration on additional preclinical compounds targetting PIM/FLT3. 

"We are excited to sign a license agreement for SEL24 with the Menarini Group," said Pawel Przewiezlikowski, Chief Executive Officer at Selvita. "This collaboration takes us another step closer to delivering a much-needed new treatment for AML patients." In preclinical testing, Selvita observed a synergism of SEL24-B489 with standard of care chemotherapy, such as cytarabine, which favours combinational therapy. Additionally, SEL24-B489 showed superior activity on a panel of AML models over other selective PIM or FLT3 inhibitors currently developed by competitors, Selvita said.