Launching a drug development company with novel technology from academia
Our corporate group has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs at this stage to help them optimally and efficiently select and form the appropriate legal entity
Projects We Work On
Product Licensing & Collaboration
Overview
For many emerging companies in life science, healthcare IT, medical devices or engineering technology, accelerating value creation by collaborating with other industry players is an important business strategy.
Collaborations are challenging to structure, and you need legal counsel who:
thoroughly understand your intellectual property and the technology behind your R&D programs
are business-savvy and can help create agreements that achieve your financial and scientific goals
and can represent your interests in situations where your counterparty may be much larger and have greater negotiating leverage than you.
Experience
At Faber, we’ve worked with 2,000+ clients in life science, healthcare IT, medical devices and engineering technology. We have over a dozen lawyers focusing their practices on handling these kinds of transactions, and our life science practice is among the deepest and most comprehensive in the country. As a result, whatever your opportunity, we’re likely to have a senior lawyer who has recently handled comparable deals involving similar technology, industry segments and client situations … very often with the same counterparties you’re talking to.
Further, many of our lawyers have worked in-house in your industry, giving them practical insight into how a contract will play out in the real world. Several of our professionals have been entrepreneurs and led venture-backed companies.
Our transactional experience includes:
Licensing for compounds, technology platforms, processes, know-how and software
Selective licensing by application or territory
Evaluation and option arrangements
Alliances for discovery, co-development and/or co-commercialization
Manufacturing and process/formulation collaborations
Promotion and distribution agreements
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Focus
At Faber, most of our attorneys have managed in-house legal departments for Big Pharma, where they launched such partnerships, then managed them throughout their life cycle. Several of us are former entrepreneurs whose business leadership resulted in successful collaborations.
A senior attorney will work closely with your scientific and business leaders to craft a strategic partnership that is “fit for purpose” — optimally designed to achieve your high priority R&D and commercial goals, while respecting your unique risk tolerance for key areas of business. We do this by considering whether each key term:
aligns (or misaligns) the interests of the parties,
maintains the necessary leverage to address and adapt flexibly to unforeseen developments and challenges, and
balances responsibility and risk with investment, control and potential financial reward.
Comprehensive foresight
Because we appreciate that these deals are about forging business relationships, we understand where they can go wrong and how to negotiate terms that will help keep them on track. Based on our operational backgrounds, we’ll help you prioritize issues and account for the details that determine real world success.
We also have experience appropriately employing a wide variety of option based and staged deal structures.
Our clients rely on us to provide sound business judgment, as well as legal advice, to manage or mitigate specific risks and challenges in these structures, such as a change of control or shifts in business and scientific priorities during the full deal lifecycle.
Related Transactions
Versant Ventures Management, LLC
Antibody Discovery and Collaboration AgreementMulti-year collaboration with AbCellera to discover therapeutic antibodies for multiple targets selected by Versant’s portfolio of biologics-focused biotechnology companies
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ONK Therapeutics Limited + Intellia Therapeutics, Inc.
License, Collaboration and Option AgreementLicense, Collaboration and Option Agreement to advance allogeneic CRISPR-Edited NK cell therapies, with milestones up to $920M per product plus royalties
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Global Alliance for TB Drug Development + GlaxoSmithKline
Research and Development Collaboration AgreementAmended and Restatement of Research and Development Collaboration Agreement with GSK to identify and advance novel chemical entities for the potential treatment of TB as well as non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infections
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. + Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Disease Education and Promotion AgreementUnited States gastrointestinal disease education and promotion agreement with Ironwood for Alnylam’s givosiran product
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. + Vir Biotechnology, Inc.
Collaboration and License AgreementExclusive license with Vir Biotechnology to develop and commercialize RNAi therapeutics for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and a research collaboration for other infectious diseases
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Phenex Pharmaceuticals AG + Janssen
Research CollaborationResearch collaboration for autoimmune and chronic inflammatory disorders
ProThera Biologics, Inc. + ProMetic Life Sciences
Cross-License and Cross-Border Strategic PartnershipCross-license and cross-border strategic partnership to develop, manufacture and commercialize plasma-derived Inter-alpha Inhibitor Proteins (IAIPs) for treating orphan diseases and for other indications
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