Hanmi Pharmaceutical agrees to mega-license deal

Hanmi Pharmaceutical entered into an agreement with Sanofi, a French drug maker, to license the Korean company’s Quantum Project, a diabetes solutions portfolio in development, Hanmi said Thursday.

Hanmi will receive an upfront payment of 400 million euros ($435 million) and is eligible for payments of up to 3.5 billion euros, according to certain sales and development milestones. After the product is released, a separate two-digit percentage royalty for the sales will also be provided to the Korean drug maker.

Sanofi will receive a worldwide license to develop and commercialize three investigative diabetes treatments, including a drug called efpeglenatide that belongs to a novel class of medicines called GLP1-agnostics, used to control blood sugar.

Hanmi will keep an exclusive option to jointly commercialize the products in Korea and China.

The Quantum Project is a new pipeline of a long lasting-diabetes treatment applying Hanmi’s technology, LAPSCOVERY (Long Acting Protein/Peptide Discovery), which maximizes treatment by limiting the number and dose of administered medicines.

BY KIM JEE-HEE, BLOOMBERG [kim.jeehee@joongang.co.kr]