Pharmakon Funds to Invest Up to $70 Million in Senior-Secured Loans to Epizyme.
Royalty Pharma announced today that it has agreed to pay $330 million to purchase Eisai Co., Ltd.’s royalties on future worldwide sales of tazemetostat, Epizyme Inc.’s (Nasdaq: EPZM) lead investigational agent, outside of Japan, and made an equity investment in Epizyme of $100 million, with options to invest up to an additional $100 million in Epizyme common stock. In addition, investment funds managed by Pharmakon Advisors agreed to provide $70 million in senior-secured loans with the possibility to fund up to $370 million over time.
Tazemetostat is a first-in-class, oral EZH2 inhibitor in clinical development for certain oncology indications, including epithelioid sarcoma and follicular lymphoma. Under a collaboration agreement between Epizyme and Eisai, Epizyme is responsible for the development and worldwide commercialization of tazemetostat (outside of Japan) and Eisai is responsible for the development and commercialization of tazemetostat in Japan. As part of the agreement, Epizyme owes milestones and royalties on sales of tazemetostat outside of Japan to Eisai, and Eisai owes royalties on sales of tazemetostat in Japan to Epizyme.
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Goodwin Procter LLP, Dechert LLP, and Maiwald Patentanwalts- und Rechtsanwalts GmbH acted as legal advisors to Royalty Pharma and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP acted as legal advisor to Pharmakon.
This text is a press release from Royalty Pharma. The full text version of the article can be found here: https://www.royaltypharma.com/tazemetostat-purchase/
