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Rib-X Pharmaceuticals Inc. scored a $3 million milestone payment from French biotech giant Sanofi related to a license for the New Haven, Conn.-based company’s antibiotics to fight superbugs.
Rib-X’s RX04 drug development program is focused on developing antibiotics to treat multi-drug resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative infections. In less than three years, the company has formulated three novel antibiotic classes.
The two companies formed their partnership in July 2011. To date, Rib-X has taken in $22 million through four milestone payments, and it could receive as much as $740 million from the deal. The agreement pertains to Rib-X’s RX-04 program, targeting the ribosomes in bacteria and interfering with their ability to make proteins. Per terms of the partnership, Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) gets the right to develop multiple products under the assets licensed by Rib-X; The Connecticut company retains its rights to the drug platform and its future programs, and it also retains a co-promotion option in the U.S. on one of the products stemming from the partnership.
Privately held Rib-X was founded in 2001 by Yale University colleagues Peter Moore, William Jorgensen and Thomas Steitz, winner of a portion of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work describing the structure and function of the ribosome.
Rib-X filed a registration statement in November to go public. It did not release the number of shares, nor the anticipated price of the shares for the proposed IPO.
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