Practices

Life Sciences Corporate Partnering and Licensing

Why Cooley

We have a dedicated team of 40+ corporate partnering and licensing lawyers, including senior team members who are internationally recognized as being the best in their field. Many of our professionals are backed by a wealth of supporting experience, having been pharmaceutical marketing specialists, business consultants, financial leaders, biotech researchers and in-house counsel at life sciences companies including Amgen, Exelixis, Jazz Pharma and ZymoGenetics.

We bring to bear decades of experience across a wide range of transaction structures, territories, product stages and technologies, including highly structured transactions with other drivers such as equity or R&D investment, option and stage-acquisition rights, complex financing and tax structure and territory/field sharing.

Areas of Practice

Complex early-stage R&D deals

  • Advise on target discovery collaborations
  • Draft option-based structures
  • Negotiate pre-clinical program licensing

Clinical stage asset deals

  • Assist with co-development and/or profit sharing or other complex financial arrangements
  • Advise on equity investments, credit facilities and other off-balance sheet funding mechanisms
  • Counsel on cross-border and global transactions 

Commercial stage assets

  • Advise on co-promotion arrangements and indication splitting arrangements
  • Assist in structuring spin-offs, divestitures and out-licenses from pharma
  • Negotiate the re-purposing of assets

Representative Matters

2023

  • SystImmune and Bristol Myers Squibb – $8.4 billion deal
  • Quell Therapeutics and AstraZeneca – $2.1 billion deal
  • Beam Therapeutics and Eli Lilly – $600 million deal
  • MediLink Therapeutics and Zai Lab – $1 billion deal
  • Immatics and Moderna – $1.7 billion deal
  • Zion Pharma and Roche – $680 million deal
  • SCYNEXIS and GSK – $593 million deal

2022

  • Immatics and Bristol Myers Squibb (expansion of 2021 collaboration) – $4.3 billion deal
  • Poseida Therapeutics and Roche – $6 billion deal
  • Turning Point Therapeutics and LaNova – $220 million deal

2021

  • Immatics and Bristol Myers Squibb – $920 million deal
  • Poseida Therapeutics and Takeda – $3.6 billion deal
  • Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Sunovion – $890 million deal
  • Cidara Therapeutics and Janssen – $780 million deal
  • Molecular Templates and Bristol Myers Squibb – $1.4 billion deal
  • Merus and Eli Lilly – $1.6 billion deal

2020

  • Fate Therapeutics and Janssen Biotech - $3.1 billion deal
  • Sangamo and Biogen - $2.7 billion deal
  • Neurocrine and Takeda - $2 billion deal
  • Arcus Biosciences and Gilead - $2 billion deal
  • Hansa Biopharma and Sarepta - $407.5 million deal
  • Silence Therapeutics plc and AstraZeneca - $80 million deal

2019

  • Harpoon Therapeutics and AbbVie - $2.3 billion deal
  • Adaptive Biotechnologies and Genentech - $2.3 billion deal
  • Goldfinch Bio and Gilead - $2 billion deal
  • Neurocrine Biosciences and Voyager Therapeutics - $1.8 billion deal
  • Immatics and Celgene - $1.5 billion deal 
  • Jazz Pharmaceuticals and PharmaMar - $1 billion deal
  • Bavarian Nordic and GSK - €955 million deal
  • StrideBio and Takeda - $710 million deal

2018

  • Arena Pharmaceuticals and United Therapeutics - $1.2 billion deal
  • Lodo Therapeutics and Genentech - $969 million deal
  • CStone Pharmaceuticals and Blueprint Medicines - $386 million deal
  • Vir Biotechnology acquisition of Humabs BioMed and deals with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Visterra and four leading academic research institutions

2017

  • HanAll BioPharma and Harbour BioMed - $81 million deal
  • Jazz Pharmaceuticals and ImmunoGen - $175 million deal
  • Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Akebia - $1 billion deal

2016

  • EpiMab and Innovent Biologics - $120 million deal
  • Chemocentryx and Vifor Pharma - $85 million deal
  • Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Medimetriks - $22 million deal
  • Ultragenyx and Takeda - undisclosed
  • Exelixis and Ipsen - $200 million upfront deal
  • Imperial Innovations, Cambridge Enterprise and UCL Business in a deal with AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson to form Apollo Therapeutics

2015

  • Five Prime Therapeutics and Bristol-Myers Squibb - $1.74 billion
  • Ionis Pharmaceuticals (formerly Isis Pharmaceuticals) and Janssen Biotech - $835 million
  • Aduro Biotech and Novartis - $750 million
  • Kite Pharma and Amgen - $585 million
  • XOMA and Novartis - $480 million
  • Engene and Janssen Biotech - $441 million
  • Regeneron and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma - $225 million
  • Axovant Sciences and Arena Pharmaceuticals - $105.5 million

2014

  • NewLink Genetics Corporation and Genentech - $1+ billion
  • MannKind Corporation and Sanofi - $925 million
  • FORMA Therapeutics and Celgene - $600 million
  • MyoKardia and Sanofi - $200 million
  • Anacor Pharmaceuticals and Sandoz - $65 million
  • Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd and Eisai
  • Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd and NuView
  • Ichor Medical Systems and Pfizer
  • Anacor Pharmaceuticals and Merck Serono
  • TRACON and Santen