UniQure Gets $53 Mln From Bristol-Myers Under Deal To Develop Gene Therapies

(RTTNews) - uniQure N.V. (QURE), a Dutch human gene therapy company, announced Monday the receipt of an additional $53 million from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) in accordance with the companies' strategic collaboration to develop gene therapies to treat a range of cardiovascular diseases.

Bristol-Myers selected three new collaboration targets triggering a $15 million cash payment to uniQure.

The collaboration agreement, which closed on May 21, provides Bristol-Myers exclusive access to uniQure's gene therapy technology platform for multiple targets in cardiovascular diseases.

Bristol-Myers Squibb also acquired an additional 1.3 million ordinary shares of uniQure priced at $29.67 per share, providing net proceeds to the Company of approximately $38 million. The purchase price represents an approximately 26% premium over uniQure's closing price per ordinary share on August 7. After this second equity closing, Bristol-Myers Squibb owns 9.9% of uniQure's outstanding ordinary shares.

Joern Aldag, Chief Executive Officer of uniQure, said, "With the recent addition of more than $200 million in capital from our collaboration and the Company's recent follow-on offering, we have the financial resources to meet the needs of our collaboration and advance the development of our proprietary pipeline focused on CNS and liver-directed diseases."

Under the deal terms, Bristol-Myers has made total payments to uniQure of $140 million. uniQure will also be eligible to receive research, development and regulatory milestone payments, including up to $254 million for the lead S100A1 therapeutic and up to $217 million for each other gene therapy product potentially developed under the collaboration.

Additionally, uniQure is eligible to receive net sales-based milestone payments and tiered single- to double-digit royalties on product sales.

Bristol-Myers-Squibb has been granted two warrants, each to acquire up to an additional 5% equity interest, at a premium, based on additional targets being introduced into the collaboration.

The companies have also agreed to enter into a supply contract, under which uniQure will undertake manufacturing of all gene therapy products under the collaboration.