C4X Discovery Holdings signs licensing agreement with Sanofi, shares jump

C4X Discovery Holdings PLC (LON:C4XD), a UK-based pharmaceutical company, announced today that its subsidiary C4X Discovery Limited has signed an exclusive global licensing agreement with French pharmaceutical company Sanofi (PA:SASY) for its oral pre-clinical IL-17A inhibitor programme.

Financial terms
C4X will receive an upfront payment of €7mln from Sanofi, plus €11mln in pre-clinical payments. The company could also receive a further €407mln if certain development, regulatory and commercialisation milestones are met, meaning the total value of the deal is up to €414mln.

Treatment
The IL-17 family of cytokines are strong inducers of inflammation and are implicated in a variety of autoimmune diseases including psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. Under the license, Sanofi will develop and commercialise an oral therapy for the treatment of these inflammatory diseases.

“We are proud to be working with Sanofi to create much needed oral therapies in the underserved inflammatory disease space.,” said C4X Discovery CEO Clive Dix. “The Psoriasis market alone is estimated to be worth circa $24bln per annum by 2027, and when combined with Sanofi’s development expertise our programme has the potential to address a number of indications.”

“This is the second significant agreement for a C4XD programme and marks a major milestone for the Company, not only validating the strength of our Drug Discovery expertise, but also our strategy to drive shareholder value through early-stage revenue generating deals.”

This is not the first deal with a major pharmaceutical signed by C4X. In 2018 the company signed a licensing agreement with Indivior PLC (LON:INDV) worth up to $294mln to help treat addiction. That drug is currently in a phase 1 clinical trial for treatment of opioid use disorder.

“With Indivior progressing our molecule for opioid addiction through a Phase I clinical trial and now our partnership with Sanofi driving potential next generation oral IL-17 therapies, we look forward with confidence to further develop our portfolio and deliver additional novel small molecule drug candidates tackling significant patient needs,” Dix added.

At 09:40BST, C4X shares were up 12.5% at 45.00p per share. Sanofi shares were unchanged at €85.12.