Cel­gene joins the PD-1 check­point club, bag­ging BeiGene drug with $413M down and $1B on the ta­ble

Cel­gene is join­ing the fast grow­ing PD-1 club.

The big biotech $CELG has tak­en a lead po­si­tion in the sec­ond wave of PD-1 check­points in the clin­ic, bag­ging rights to BeiGene’s $BGNE can­di­date for sol­id tu­mors in a $1.4 bil­lion deal, with $263 mil­lion of that paid up­front in a li­cens­ing fee, $150 mil­lion for an eq­ui­ty stake and $980 mil­lion more in mile­stones.

It’s a rich deal for this stage of the game, aimed at the rich­est health­care mar­kets on the plan­et. Cel­gene gets the US and Eu­ro­pean mar­kets and every­thing else out­side of Asia, which the Chi­nese com­pa­ny is keep­ing for it­self, along with glob­al de­vel­op­ment rights on hema­to­log­i­cal ma­lig­nan­cies. Two years ago, Cel­gene paid As­traZeneca $450 mil­lion up front to part­ner on their PD-L1 for heme.

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