- Royalty Pharma has acquired an interest in PureTech’s royalty in Karuna Therapeutics’ KarXT; Royalty Pharma and PureTech will share in royalties above certain annual sales thresholds
- PureTech retains its current equity stake in Karuna in addition to milestone payments and 20% of sublicense revenues due to PureTech
- Transaction provides further non-dilutive capital for PureTech’s growing and rapidly advancing Wholly Owned Pipeline, with five clinical-stage candidates expected by the end of 2023
NEW YORK and BOSTON, March 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Royalty Pharma plc (Nasdaq: RPRX), the largest buyer of biopharmaceutical royalties and a leading funder of innovation across the life sciences industry, and PureTech Health plc (Nasdaq: PRTC, LSE: PRTC), a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to changing the treatment paradigm for devastating diseases, today announced that Royalty Pharma has acquired an interest in PureTech’s royalty in Karuna Therapeutics’ KarXT for up to $500 million with $100 million in cash up front and up to $400 million in additional payments contingent on the achievement of certain regulatory and commercial milestones.
“We are delighted to partner with PureTech, which began a remarkable innovation story with KarXT that has demonstrated an impressive clinical profile in Phase 3,” said Pablo Legorreta, Royalty Pharma’s founder and Chief Executive Officer. “We believe this important therapy will have a significant impact on patients with schizophrenia if approved by the FDA. This medicine is a notable addition to our royalty portfolio and is well aligned with our strategy of investing in breakthrough therapies that address areas of high unmet medical need.”
“We’ve seen extraordinary clinical success demonstrated by KarXT, which, if approved, will be the first new mechanism for treating schizophrenia in more than fifty years. KarXT has now demonstrated efficacy in registration enabling studies and is heralded as a potential treatment paradigm shift that could impact millions of patients,” said Daphne Zohar, founder and Chief Executive Officer of PureTech. “This agreement will provide PureTech with additional non-dilutive capital to advance our Wholly Owned Pipeline, including our rapidly maturing clinical programs, towards potential commercialization. Such non-dilutive sources of capital have allowed us to fund our pipeline and operations without having to raise capital from the public markets in over five years, and we are pleased to be able to benefit from the success of our invented programs.”
As part of this transaction, PureTech has sold its right to receive a 3% royalty from Karuna to Royalty Pharma on sales up to $2 billion annually, after which threshold Royalty Pharma will receive 33% and PureTech will retain 67% of the royalty payments. PureTech retains its 3.1% equity ownership in Karuna1. Additionally, under its license agreement with Karuna, PureTech retains the right to receive milestone payments upon the achievement of certain regulatory approvals and 20% of sublicense income.
KarXT was invented by a team at PureTech, including its Chief Innovation Officer, Eric Elenko, Ph.D., who served as the founding CEO of Karuna Therapeutics. KarXT is an oral, investigational M1/M4-preferring muscarinic agonist in development for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological conditions, including schizophrenia as a monotherapy and adjunctive therapy and psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease. Karuna has announced that it plans to submit a New Drug Application for KarXT in schizophrenia to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-2023.
Advisors
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, Jones Day and Maiwald GmbH acted as legal advisors to Royalty Pharma and Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., acted as legal advisors to PureTech.
About Royalty Pharma
Founded in 1996, Royalty Pharma is the largest buyer of biopharmaceutical royalties and a leading funder of innovation across the biopharmaceutical industry, collaborating with innovators from academic institutions, research hospitals and non-profits through small and mid-cap biotechnology companies to leading global pharmaceutical companies. Royalty Pharma has assembled a portfolio of royalties which entitles it to payments based directly on the top-line sales of many of the industry’s leading therapies. Royalty Pharma funds innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry both directly and indirectly - directly when it partners with companies to co-fund late-stage clinical trials and new product launches in exchange for future royalties, and indirectly when it acquires existing royalties from the original innovators. Royalty Pharma’s current portfolio includes royalties on more than 35 commercial products, including Vertex’s Trikafta, Kalydeco, Orkambi and Symdeko, Biogen’s Tysabri, AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, Astellas and Pfizer’s Xtandi, GSK’s Trelegy, Novartis’ Promacta, Pfizer’s Nurtec ODT, Johnson & Johnson’s Tremfya, Roche’s Evrysdi, Gilead’s Trodelvy, and 10 development-stage product candidates.
About PureTech
PureTech is a biotherapeutics company dedicated to changing the treatment paradigm for devastating diseases. The Company has created a broad and deep pipeline through the expertise of its experienced research and development team and its extensive network of scientists, clinicians and industry leaders. This pipeline, which is being advanced both internally and through PureTech's Founded Entities, is comprised of 26 therapeutics and therapeutic candidates, including two (Plenity® and EndeavorRx®) that have received both U.S. FDA clearance and European marketing authorization and a third (KarXT) that will soon be filed for FDA approval, as of the most recent update by the Company. All of the underlying programs and platforms that resulted in this pipeline of therapeutic candidates were initially identified or discovered and then advanced by the PureTech team through key validation points based on its unique insights and technology platforms.
For more information, visit www.puretechhealth.com or connect with us on Twitter @puretechh.
Royalty Pharma Forward-Looking Statements
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For further information, please reference Royalty Pharma’s reports and documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). You may get these documents by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.
PureTech Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements contained in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including without limitation those statements related to the terms of the agreement with Royalty Pharma for the Karuna royalties, KarXT, its development, clinical milestones and potential therapeutic applications, PureTech’s Wholly Owned Pipeline and the development, clinical milestones and potential therapeutic applications associated with its candidates, and our future prospects, developments, and strategies. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from current expectations, including, but not limited to, those risks, uncertainties and other important factors described under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2021 filed with the SEC and in our other regulatory filings. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the present and future business strategies of the Company and the environment in which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as required by law and regulatory requirements, we disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 which forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ('MAR'). Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.
Royalty Pharma Investor Relations and Communications
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PureTech Investor Contacts
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PureTech Media Contacts
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U.S. Media
Nichole Sarkis
+1 774 278 8273
nichole@tenbridgecommunications.com
1 As of February 23, 2023
