ROCKVILLE, Md., Aug. 10, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:NABI) announced today that it has successfully completed the technology transfer of program know-how associated with the sale of the PentaStaphTM vaccine candidate to GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals S.A. (GSK). As a result of successfully completing this milestone, Nabi is eligible to receive $8 million under the agreement governing Nabi's sale of PentaStaphTM (Pentavalent S. aureus Vaccine) and related assets to GSK.
Nabi sold PentaStaph and related technologies to GSK for a total consideration of $46 million, including $26 million associated with accomplishing four milestone tasks. Including this milestone, Nabi has earned a total of $21 million in PentaStaph milestone payments to date. The remaining $5 million payment contemplated in the transaction is due upon completion of the Phase I trial that began in December 2009. In addition to the milestone payments earned thus far, Nabi received a cash payment of $21.5 million when the transaction closed in November 2009 that included $20 million associated with the transaction close, $1 million associated with the sale of a related pre-clinical program for a vaccine against S.epidermedis and $0.5 million as reimbursement for license fees and clinical materials previously manufactured for use in the Phase I trial.
"We have made tremendous progress in achieving the PentaStaph milestones by completing three of the four milestone tasks in eight short months following the close of this transaction," said Dr. Raafat Fahim, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nabi Biopharmaceuticals. "We have one remaining milestone task to complete under this agreement before fully realizing the significant value of the PentaStaph asset sale. We expect to accomplish this final milestone within the next 9 months."
About Nabi Biopharmaceuticals
Nabi Biopharmaceuticals leverages its experience and knowledge in powering the immune system to develop products that target serious medical conditions in the areas of nicotine addiction and gram-positive bacterial infections. Nabi Biopharmaceuticals is currently developing NicVAX® (Nicotine Conjugate Vaccine), an innovative and proprietary investigational vaccine for treatment of nicotine addiction and prevention of smoking relapse. The company is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. For additional information about Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, please visit www.nabi.com
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are not strictly historical are forward-looking statements and include statements about products in development, results and analyses of clinical trials and studies, research and development expenses, cash expenditures, licensure applications and approvals, and alliances and partnerships, among other matters. You can identify these forward-looking statements because they involve our expectations, intentions, beliefs, plans, projections, anticipations, or other characterizations of future events or circumstances. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of any number of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, risks relating to our ability to conduct and obtain successful results from our two Phase III clinical trials for NicVAX; GSK's failure to exercise its option for and successfully commercialize NicVAX; GSK's failure to successfully develop and commercialize any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine utilizing our intellectual property; our ability to commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise its option for NicVAX; our ability to raise sufficient new capital resources to fully develop and commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise the NicVAX option; our ability to attract, retain and motivate key employees; our ability to collect any further milestones and royalty payments under the PhosLo and PentaStaph agreements; the ability to obtain regulatory approval for NicVAX and any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine in the U.S. or other markets; our ability to successfully contract with contract manufacturing organizations for the manufacture and supply of NicVAX and the risk that these organizations will not fulfill their obligations to us; our ability to comply with reporting and payment obligations under government rebate and pricing programs; and loss of full use of our net operating loss carryforwards. Some of these factors are more fully discussed, as are other factors, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 26, 2009 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake to update any of these forward-looking statements or to announce the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements except as required by law.