Nicola Maguire

Nicola Maguire is a partner in Cooley's life sciences practice and is resident in the London office. She has developed a practice specialising in advising life sciences companies and other clients whose businesses have a significant reliance on intellectual property.

Many of the transactions on which Nicola works have a significant international element, with parties in the US or Europe. Nicola's experience includes advising on the acquisition for Swedish listed company Meda AB of an Italian specialty pharma company, Rottapharm, for the Danish, listed company Ambu A/S on its acquisition of King Systems, a US subsidiary of UK listed company, Consort Medical, on the creation of an Indian joint venture between the Wellcome Trust and Merck and on the creation of a joint venture between Swedish company, Karolinska Development and UK based Rosetta Capital. Transactions such as this illustrate the cross-border nature of Nicola's practice. She has particular expertise advising clients at all stages of development, from early stage startups to listed companies, and on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and equity fundings.

Nicola's practice also includes advising on general commercial matters such as materials transfer agreements, intellectual property licences, research and collaboration agreements and distribution and manufacturing agreements. Recent transactions include acting for the Wellcome Trust on its collaboration relating to dengue fever with the University of Leuven and Janssen and for King's College London on a licence and development agreement with UCB.

Nicola is recommended for corporate advice in the Global Counsel Life Sciences Industry Report, Chambers, IAM and in the Legal 500. In 2016, she was included in The Lawyer's Elite Hot 100 list. She writes extensively in various journals on matters concerning Life Sciences companies and speaks at conferences on matters of interest to the Life Sciences sector. Nicola is recognised by Who's Who Legal for Life Sciences in which she is noted as being "very visible in the market" on a range of licensing, collaboration, distribution and clinical trial agreements also then states that "her presence on complex transactions is a blessing." Nicola has also been included in the latest edition of Euromoney's Women in Business Law Expert Guides.

Nicola speaks fluent French having spent three years working in Paris on commercial and corporate matters whilst at Freshfields.

Nicola was previously a partner at Reed Smith from 2005 - 2015 and Bird & Bird from 2001 to 2005. Previously, she worked in the in-house legal departments at GE Lighting and Cable & Wireless Communications.

Representative Matters include advising:

• Immunocore plc on a $273 million IPO and listing on Nasdaq
• CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), on its partnership with VBI Vaccines Inc., to develop VBI’s vaccine candidates against Covid-19 variants
• CEPI on a partnership agreements with Valneva for vaccine manufacturing and late-stage clinical development of a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine (VLA1553) against Chikungunya
• Union Therapeutics on its licence and option agreement with TFF Pharmaceuticals in relation to the development of Niclosamide products
• Bavarian Nordic on its acquisition of the manufacturing and global rights to two commercial vaccines – Rabipur/RabAvert and Encepur – from GlaxoSmithKline
• Clinigen Group on its agreement with Novartis to acquire the US rights to Proleukin
• Leukemia and Lymphoma Society on the signing of a collaboration agreement with Princes Maxima regarding the management of the PedAL clinical study, a study for the treatment of children with acute leukemia
• Mission Therapeutics on its collaboration agreement with AbbVie
• Amryt Pharma on the license and asset transfer agreement between Amryt and Novelion Therapeutics subsidiary, Aegerion Pharmaceuticals
• Amryt Pharma on a licence and asset purchase agreement with Aegerion
• BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. on a pre-clinical collaboration and license agreement with DiNAQOR AG, a gene therapy platform company, to develop novel gene therapies to treat rare genetic cardiomyopathies
• Orchard Therapeutics on a strategic alliance with Oxford Biomedica
• Immunocore on an amendment to a research and collaboration agreement between Immunocore and Genentech
• Immunocore on its $320 million Series A financing round, the largest ever for a European biotech 
• Dalcor Pharmaceuticals on its $150 million financing
• Ieso Health on a fund raising led by Morningside, IP Group and Draper Esprit 
• Imperial Innovations, UCL Business, and Cambridge Enterprise on the establishment of a joint venture, Apollo Therapeutics, with GSIC, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson
• Vernalis Research on its joint venture with Dania Therapeutics 
• Acucela on its in-license of intellectual property from the University of Manchester
• Phoremost, a spin out from Cambridge University, on its series A fund raising and various in licenses on technology
• PhoreMost on its spin out of NeoPhore and the investment by CPF Pioneer Fund in NeoPhore
• Reckitt Benckiser on various clinical trial and other commercial agreements 
• King's College on a collaboration and licence agreement with UCB regarding diabetes 
• Columbia Laboratories on its acquisition of Molecular Profiles, a UK based provider of pharmaceutical formulation development and manufacturing services, for US$25m 
• Meda AB in its €2.275bn acquisition of Rottapharm l Madaus 
• Imanova on its setting up for the Medical Research Council, King's College, Imperial College and UCL and its acquisition of GSK's clinical imaging facility 
• GMEC and leading UK Universities on a collaboration agreement with Pfizer relating to rare diseases giving Pfizer options to take licences under intellectual property developed by the universities 
• Sofinnova Partners on its investment in Leucid Bio (a spin out from Kings College) and CamPhos
• Juniper Pharmaceuticals on the supply agreement for its key product with Merck
• Allergy Therapeutics on its co-development collaboration agreement with Ergomed for the clinical development of three of its immunotherapy products
• Scancell on its research collaboration with BioNTech for the potential development of T cell receptor based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer
• Enterome on its joint venture with Nestle Health Science to create Microbiome Diagnostics Partners for the development and commercialization of innovative micro-biome based diagnostics

Quotes

• "Nicola Maguire has strong commercial sense and provides advice informed by extensive experience working alongside leading life science companies, and her knowledge of the dynamic biopharma landscape." - Chambers & Partners, 2022
• "She understands start-ups and is adaptable to their needs. A top-notch practitioner." - Chambers & Partners, 2022
• "Nicola truly understands what a client needs and proactively helps find solutions that work in the time we have." - Chambers & Partners, 2021
• "She is very responsive, knowledgeable and listens to the client's concerns." - Chambers & Partners, 2020
• "She's very experienced, easy to work with and a fair negotiator. She is excellent technically and knows the sector." - Chambers & Partners, 2019
• "For companies whose core asset is intellectual property, Maguire makes a fine choice." – IAM
• "Superlative licensing practitioners John Wilkinson and Nicola Maguire both come recommended." – IAM