Celyad Announces Commercial License Deal For C-Cure In China - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Celyad SA (CYAD) said that it has entered into a new collaboration and distribution agreement with its Hong-Kong based partner, Medisun International Limited. This license agreement confirms Celyad's intention to expand the global footprint of its lead cardiac disease cell therapy candidate for the treatment of ischemic heart failure, C-Cure.

As per the terms of the new license agreement, Celyad will conduct all clinical development and undertake any regulatory steps necessary for market approval in China, Hong-Kong, Taiwan and Macau. With a minimum of 20 million euros, these activities will be funded by Medisun.

Celyad expects initial clinical development activities to take place in Hong-Kong with the potential addition of clinical sites in Celyad's CHART-2 trial, which is expected to be initiated before the end of 2015.

In exchange for the license, and in addition to the benefit of the funding provided by Medisun to support clinical development , Celyad will receive royalties and profit sharing. The royalty rates ranging from 10% to 30% are calculated on total revenues of C-Cure, and profit sharing ranging from 20 to 25% are calculated on total revenues less royalties.

This agreement will last for an initial period of fifteen years, subject to earlier termination as specified in the agreement.

C-Cure is Celyad's most advanced product candidate based on its cardiopoiesis platform and is being developed for heart failure indications. The Company expects to release the full clinical data set for CHART-1, its Phase III trial in Europe and Israel, in the middle of 2016. The research underlying this technology was originally conducted at Mayo Clinic by the research team of Professor André Terzic and Atta Behfar, and has been published in numerous peer-reviewed publications.

C-Cure consists of a patient's own cells harvested from bone marrow, treated with cardiopoietic growth factors and then re-injected into the heart. It is designed to produce new autologous heart muscle cells which behave identically to those lost as a result of infarction, without the risk of rejection.