Agios Scores $200M Upfront from New Celgene Alliance

May 18, 2016

Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Celgene Corp. have created a strategic collaboration focused on metabolic immuno-oncology. The goal of the collaboration is to discover, develop and commercialize novel therapies based on Agios' cellular metabolism research platform. Agios will receive an upfront cash payment of $200 million plus the potential for additional payments if certain development and regulatory milestones are achieved.

"Metabolic immuno-oncology is an exciting new area of research for Agios that holds tremendous promise for patients and builds on our strength in cellular metabolism," said David Schenkein, M.D., CEO at Agios. "Following our successful cancer metabolism partnership, we look forward to continuing our work with Celgene in this new field. This strategic alliance will allow Agios to quickly expand our existing research platform into a third core area while leveraging Celgene's capabilities and broad portfolio of immuno-oncology assets."

Also announced today, the companies modified certain rights from their 2010 collaboration (the "2010 Agreement"). First, Agios, which previously held U.S. rights for AG-120, gained global development and commercialization rights to the program from Celgene. As of August 15, 2016 , neither party will have financial or other obligations to each other related to AG-120.

Second, the companies agreed that rights to two cancer metabolism programs discovered under the 2010 Agreement, including a program focused on MTAP (methylthioadenosine phosphorylase) deleted cancers, will advance under the structure of the new research collaboration. Following the expiration of the discovery phase of the 2010 Agreement on April 14, 2016, all other cancer metabolism programs discovered at Agios will remain wholly owned by Agios.