Zymeworks sings to the tune of $325M with Jazz opt-in for HER2 can­cer drug

Zymeworks is cap­ping a rocky year with a com­mit­ted part­ner.

Af­ter an­nounc­ing it would dole out $50 mil­lion to be­come the sec­ond part­ner on Zymeworks’ HER2 bis­pe­cif­ic, Jazz Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals was met with some ques­tions from an­a­lysts around the fi­nanc­ing en­gi­neer­ing of the deal, par­tic­u­lar­ly cu­ri­ous as to why the duo linked up be­fore a cru­cial read­out of the drug, known as zanidatam­ab.

But with a 41.3% ob­jec­tive re­sponse rate in a piv­otal tri­al in bil­iary tract can­cer ear­li­er this week, the pair will march for­ward. Jazz is fork­ing over $325 mil­lion to ex­clu­sive­ly de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize zanidatam­ab in the US, Eu­rope and Japan. If the col­lab­o­ra­tors make it to the end of the al­bum, the pay­out could be $1.76 bil­lion for Zymeworks, as well as tiered roy­al­ties be­tween 10% and 20% on Jazz’s net sales. BeiGene holds the Chi­na, South Ko­rea, Aus­tralia and New Zealand rights to the drug.

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