Es­pe­ri­on sues Dai­ichi Sankyo, de­mand­ing pay­ment of $300M mile­stone for car­dio drug

Es­pe­ri­on is su­ing its busi­ness part­ner Dai­ichi Sankyo, say­ing the Japan­ese drug­mak­er is im­prop­er­ly re­fus­ing to pay a $300 mil­lion mile­stone that the biotech com­pa­ny will be owed af­ter re­port­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a large tri­al of its car­dio­vas­cu­lar drug Nexle­tol.

The 2019 deal be­tween the com­pa­nies had Dai­ichi Sankyo pay $150 mil­lion up­front plus an­oth­er $150 mil­lion af­ter the first sales of the drug. But an­oth­er ma­jor pay­out was tied to an out­comes study re­port­ed this month, known as CLEAR. Es­pe­ri­on, in its suit against Dai­ichi, ar­gues that the drug’s more than 20% re­duc­tion of heart at­tack risk is enough to trig­ger a $300 mil­lion pay­out from Dai­ichi once it’s added to the drug’s la­bel.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER