Xoma Nabs $35M Upfront Deal

Xoma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:XOMA]]), the Berkeley, CA-based developer of targeted antibody drugs, said today it will receive a $35 million upfront fee from France-based Les Laboratories Servier for the right to co-develop a new anti-inflammation treatment. Xoma could receive as much as $470 million in milestone payments through the partnership, and a “mid-teens” percentage cut of sales if the drug, XOMA 052, ever becomes a marketed product. Shares of Xoma climbed about 20 percent to $6.36 a share at the opening of trading today on the news.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.