MedImmune will pay $10 million upfront for an exclusive license.

 MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Israel-based Compugen, a discovery and development company focused on cancer immunotherapy. 

As part of the agreement, MedImmune receives an exclusive license from Compugen for the development of bi-specific and multi-specific antibody products derived from a Compugen pipeline program. MedImmune will be responsible for all research, development and commercialization activities. Compugen will receive $10 million as an upfront payment and will receive up to $200 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestones for the first product that is commercialized. It will also receive royalties on future product sales. Additional milestone payments and royalties will be paid by MedImmune for any additional products that are commercialized. Compugen retains all other rights to its entire pipeline of programs as monotherapies and in combination with other products

"This licensing deal allows us to monetize specific scientific advances in our programs, while we continue to advance our lead programs into clinical trials,” said Compugen President and CEO Anat Cohen-Dayag. “We are committed to our strategy of selectively collaborating with biopharmaceutical companies for the development of first-in-class products against our diverse, computationally-derived portfolio of targets."