Thomson Reuters Nominates MacroGenics and Spark Therapeutics for Allicense Breakthrough Alliance Award

Thomson Reuters Nominates MacroGenics and Spark Therapeutics for Allicense Breakthrough Alliance Award

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We leverage technical knowledge, business acumen and legal experience to structure, prepare and negotiate innovative and effective technology-related agreements.
Advising life sciences innovators, investors and industry leaders on complex transactions, legal issues and business challenges.
For companies in the life sciences sphere, licensing intellectual property and establishing strategic alliances are critical. WilmerHale’s experienced licensing lawyers shepherd biotech, pharmaceutical, healthcare and medical device clients of all sizes through the complex transactions that make their businesses possible, including a broad range of licensing, collaboration, strategic alliance and joint venture agreements. Our attorneys also excel at brokering manufacturing and supply agreements, contract research and development agreements, distribution and commercialization services agreements, and material transfer and confidentiality agreements. They also frequently represent life sciences clients as they license patents—often the foundations of their companies—from, and sponsor research at, leading academic institutions across the United States and Europe. Backed not only by their own experience but also the deep well of knowledge possessed by the firm’s patent, tax, antitrust and EU competition lawyers, our transactional attorneys are ready to handle even the most multifaceted matters. Our team helps clients protect their innovations, forge strategic alliances, and successfully navigate a complex, dynamic industry.
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WilmerHale’s lawyers are renowned for their work on mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, private equity deals, strategic alliances and corporate governance matters both domestically and in the EU and China. Healthcare clients, which include Medtronic and PerkinElmer, know us as a one-stop source for solutions to the diverse array of corporate issues they face.

For clients that range from public and private companies to individual entrepreneurs, our corporate lawyers have:

  • Served as issuer counsel or underwriters’ counsel in more than 400 public offerings and Rule 144A placements raising nearly $150 billion since 2006. We have a wide array of capital markets experience, as well as significant commercial finance knowledge.
  • Advised on more than 1,000 M&A deals with a total value in excess of $400 billion since 2006. Our experience ranges from public-public mergers and related SEC, disclosure and fiduciary duty issues to the unique issues presented by sales of private equity and venture-backed private companies.
  • Handled hundreds of strategic alliances, joint ventures, outsourcing and licensing transactions each year, including several strategic alliances that have received industry recognition for their importance. The complexity of these deals often demands deep experience and close collaboration among our corporate, licensing, intellectual property and tax lawyers, as well as our lawyers in the United States, Europe and Asia.
WilmerHale’s corporate lawyers have a long history of experience with cross-border deals involving mergers and acquisitions, public offerings and capital markets, venture capital, joint ventures and other transactions.

WilmerHale is pleased to congratulate clients MacroGenics Inc. and Spark Therapeutics Inc. for having been selected by Thomson Reuters as nominees for the Allicense Breakthrough Alliance Award 2014—an award that honors the creative partnering efforts of business development licensing and M&A professionals. Thomson Reuters Recap analysts examined hundreds of biopharma deals negotiated in 2014 and used both subjective and objective criteria to identify the top five most innovative M&A and licensing deals.

Macrogenics Inc.

On May 27,  2014, MacroGenics, Inc. (Nasdaq:MGNX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited jointly announced that they entered into an option agreement for the development and commercialization of MGD010. This product candidate incorporates MacroGenics' proprietary platform for Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART®) to simultaneously engage CD32B and CD79B, which are two B-cell surface proteins. Transactional Department Chair Steve Singer led the WilmerHale team in representing MacroGenics in this transaction. Further details can be found on MacroGenics’ site.

Spark Therapeutics Inc.

On December 8, 2014, Spark Therapeutics, a clinical-stage gene therapy company developing treatments for debilitating genetic diseases, announced that it had entered into a global collaboration with Pfizer Inc. for the development and commercialization of its proprietary SPK‐FIX bio-engineered adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for the treatment of hemophilia B. Technology Transactions and Licensing Practice Co-Chair Steve Barrett led the WilmerHale team on this deal. Further information on this deal can be found on Spark Therapeutics’ site.

The life sciences industry is a significant part of WilmerHale’s practice, with more than 100 of its lawyers devoting a significant portion of their practice to this industry. The firm has represented life sciences clients in boardrooms and courtrooms across the United States and Europe for four decades. As a result of its successful representation of public and private companies, investment banks and venture capitalists in all aspects of the life sciences industry, the firm is ranked among the top five firms in the nation for life sciences work by Chambers USA 2014 and was named a "Life Sciences Practice Group of the Year" by Law360 in 2013.

Winners of the Breakthrough Alliance Award will be announced at the upcoming Allicense 2015 conference that will be held May 5-6, 2015, in San Francisco. The Allicense Conference is the leading event for dealmaking, licensing and business development professionals, and is hosted by Thomson Reuters.

The voting process on these deals is now open.

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