Ropes & Gray represented HilleVax, Inc. on its exclusive license agreement with Chengdu Kanghua Biological Products Co., Ltd. (Kangh) for rights to Kangh’s hexavalent virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine candidate for norovirus outside of Greater China.
As part of the exclusive license agreement, Kangh will supply the VLP vaccine candidate for use in HilleVax’s near-term clinical trials, including a Phase 1 trial that HilleVax expects to initiate in 2024.
HilleVax will pay Kangh $15 million upfront with the potential for additional payments of up to $255.5 million if certain developmental and sales milestones are met. Kangh is also eligible to receive a single-digit tiered royalty on net sales outside of Greater China. The agreement was announced in a press release on Jan. 8.
Norovirus causes approximately 700 million cases of moderate-to-severe acute gastroenteritis and 200,000 deaths per year globally, resulting in over $4 billion in direct health system costs and $60 billion in societal costs per year.
The team was led by IP transactions partner Geoffrey Lin and associate Dan Freshman.
