Seres Therapeutics on Monday announced an agreement with Nestlé Health Science potentially worth over $1.9 billion to develop and market the former's drugs under development for Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, outside of the US and Canada. Under the deal, Nestlé will make an upfront payment of $120 million to Seres, with the latter eligible to a series of contingent payments for development and sales milestones, and tiered royalties on sales ranging from the high single digits percentages up to the high teens for all products.
Specifically, Nestlé will be granted commercial rights outside the US and Canada to the investigational CDI treatments SER-109 and SER-262, and the experimental IBD drugs SER-287 and SER-301. SER-109 received breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA last June, as well as orphan drug designation from the agency in August for the prevention of recurrent CDI in adults.
Additionally, Seres noted Nestlé will cover certain development costs, including one-third of the expenses for possible late-stage studies of SER-287, SER-301 and SER-262. Seres estimated that it will receive $30 million in payments this year related to the planned start of a Phase Ib trial of SER-262 in primary CDI and the expected initiation of a late-stage study for SER-109 in recurrent CDI.
"Nestlé Health Science is an ideal partner for Seres in a wide range of global markets, where its vast reach and long-standing [gastrointestinal] focus should help drive the successful adoption of our lead microbiome therapies," remarked Seres CEO Roger Pomerantz, adding "with this transformational transaction, we are pleased that significant value was placed not only on our C. difficile candidates, but also on the IBD franchise, which underscores the strong potential of our microbiome platform to address a wide range of challenging diseases across multiple areas in medicine."
