Antibodies are part of the wave of new biological drugs, which bring new treatment options to patients and bring heavy sales to the company. As more and more biopharmaceutical companies want to strengthen their antibody discovery capabilities, Ligand Pharmaceuticals believes that its antibody technology department, which has been developed internally over the past six years, is now ready to become independent.
Ligand, located in San Diego, provides a range of technologies and services for the biopharmaceutical industry customers to use for drug discovery and development, Announce It plans to spin off its OmniAb antibody division after the close on Tuesday. The split will leave two publicly traded entities, each with a different business focus and customer base. OmniAb will have to make a living on its own, competing with two established players in the field of antibody discovery, AbCelera and Adimab.
The OmniAb platform provided by Ligand to its customers in the biopharmaceutical industry provides the ability to find antibodies with potential for therapeutic applications.The platform is the product of a series of acquisitions, starting in 2016 $178 million buyout Open Monoclonal Technology (OMT) in Palo Alto, a company with antibody generation technology.In the second year, Ligand paid US$27.2 million to Acquired Crystal Biosciences. In 2019, it purchase Ab Initio, a computing antigen technology company, was acquired for US$12 million.Last year, the company A total of US$12 million was paid Two private antibody discovery companies xCella Biosciences and Taurus Biosciences.
During the conference call, Ligand CEO John Higgins stated that when his company acquired OMT, it had only 15 partners, and they were all in the discovery phase. Currently, OmniAb has more than 50 partners covering more than 200 projects. Nearly 20 of these projects are in the clinical development stage. The disclosed partners include Amgen, Pfizer and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
In contrast, AbCelera has 33 open partners and has started 60 projects. This company, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, was founded in 2012. Listed Last year, $483 million was raised. Adimab, headquartered in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was founded in 2015.It has 80 partners, although it is a ligand Company Introduction It was pointed out that the private company did not disclose how many projects these partners have initiated, nor did it state whether the projects and partnerships are ongoing or terminated.
Ligand’s business model revolves around closing deals. The company licenses its technology and some internally discovered drug projects to other parties. The fees and milestone payments for these transactions provide revenue. The additional funding comes from milestone payments and royalties paid to Ligand as discovering and licensing products make progress in their development process. In 2020, Ligand reported revenue of $186.4 million, an increase of nearly 55% from the total revenue of the previous year. The company did not announce the financial status of the OmniAb division, but the company said in a presentation that the antibody division has a contract milestone of nearly $1 billion.
Royalties from OmniAb antibodies are coming soon. In August, the Chinese authorities Officially recognized Gloria Biosciences’ drug zimberelimab, a monoclonal antibody discovered using OmniAb technology. Gloria Bio’s drug is designed to block the checkpoint protein PD-1 to treat classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The ligand will receive royalties from product sales. The regulatory decision for another antibody discovered by OmniAb is expected to be made by the end of this year.
“In short, OmniAb’s business is bigger, better, and farther than we expected a few years ago,” Higgins said.
The growth of OmniAb is accompanied by the progress of antibody research throughout the industry. In the company’s introduction, Ligand stated that the antibody drug market is expected to grow from today’s 150 billion U.S. dollars to more than 250 billion U.S. dollars within five years. The company also pointed out that 42 antibodies are now selling well, up from 36 two years ago.
The Ligand board of directors has not yet approved the specific action plan of the antibody department. But the tentative plan is for the company to conduct an initial public offering of new OmniAb shares. Ligand’s executive vice president of finance and chief financial officer Matthew Korenberg said on the conference call that he is preparing to submit regulatory documents for the IPO.
The IPO will include the newly issued shares of OmniAb.In addition to the antibody business, the new company will also include Icagen, an ion channel research asset acquired by Ligand last yearIn the IPO, Ligand expects OmniAb to issue less than 20% of its common stock. Ligand will retain the remaining shares, which will be distributed to Ligand shareholders. Ligand President and Chief Operating Officer Matthew Foehr reiterated that no company has decided that if Ligand continues to advance OmniAb’s IPO plan, regulatory documents will be submitted “in the coming months.”
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