Stephanie Parker Palmer

Stephanie’s practice focuses exclusively on representing public and private life sciences companies in a wide range of third-party commercial transactions, including in- and out-licenses, research and development collaborations, clinical trial agreements, material transfer agreements, sponsored research agreements, and supply agreements. She also serves as outside general counsel for a number of clients, providing guidance on day-to-day matters and coordinating support with her deeply knowledgeable colleagues in other practice areas at Cooley.

Stephanie is co-chair of the firm’s special counsel committee and helped launch the first special counsel academy. She is also an enthusiastic member of the Women’s Initiative.

Before joining Cooley, Stephanie was an associate at a New York-based law firm, where her practice focused on transactional work for privately owned pharmaceutical companies.

Stephanie’s representative transactions include the representation of:

• Autolus Therapeutics in its 2024 strategic collaboration with BioNTech, which included a license for certain binders and options for BioNTech to access a suite of Autolus target binders and cell programming technologies to support BioNTech’s development of in vivo cell therapy and antibody-drug conjugate candidates, as well as options to co-commercialize Autolus’ AUTO1/22 and AUTO6NG programs, with an upfront payment of $50 million and $200 million in additional equity (plus option, milestone and royalty payments)
• Immatics in its 2023 multiplatform collaboration with Moderna, spanning various therapeutic modalities including bispecifics, cell therapy and cancer vaccines, with an upfront payment of $120 million and up to $1.7 billion in milestone payments, plus royalties and an option to profit share
• Immatics in its 2022 expansion of its collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to pursue the development of multiple allogeneic off-the-shelf T cell receptor-engineered T cell (TCR-T) and/or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) programs, with an upfront payment of $60 million and up to $700 million in milestone payments, plus royalties
• Immatics in its 2021 license, development and commercialization agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb, for Immatics’ T cell receptor (TCR) Bispecific candidate, IMA401, with an upfront payment of $150 million and up to $770 million in milestone payments, plus royalties and an option to co-fund US development
• Hansa Biopharma in its 2020 license collaboration with Sarepta Therapeutics to develop and promote imlifidase, an antibody-cleaving enzyme, for use as a pre-treatment to enable Sarepta’s adeno-associated (AAV) gene therapy to be administered to patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, with an upfront payment of $10 million and up to $397.5 million in milestones, plus royalties