Ligand to Spin Off OmniAb Antibody Platform in $70M-Funded IPO

Compiled by Fan Dongdong

Recently, Ligand Pharmaceuticals announced that it will spin off OmniAb, the antibody platform business it collaborates on with Johnson & Johnson, and inject $70 million into the company.

Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. said after the market closed on Thursday that a preliminary spin-off is scheduled for the first half of this year. Since November, the California-based biopharmaceutical company has been considering various possibilities for the future of OmniAb, including the potential to become an independently listed company through an initial public offering (IPO). Ligand is now moving forward with a direct carve-out of all OmniAb shares to create two separate publicly traded companies. The company stated that as part of its full-year 2021 results, the board of directors has not yet finalized this decision, and Ligand will continue to evaluate other options.

Ligand CEO John Higgins said in a statement that the company now plans to directly fund the OmniAb business at the time of the spinoff. This strategy aims to best serve the company’s science and partnerships and maximize value for shareholders. Higgins added that this approach is also intended to expedite the spinoff as much as possible. Higgins noted that the OmniAb platform had its "most productive year ever" in 2021.

Higgins noted that nine antibodies from OmniAb have recently entered the clinical stage, with some already gaining recognition from certain regulatory authorities. Recently, CStone Pharmaceuticals received approval from Chinese regulators for Celjemy, a non-small cell lung cancer anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody derived from OmniAb. In December last year, Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, also submitted a regulatory application to the U.S. FDA for teclistamab, an OmniAb-derived bispecific antibody targeting multiple myeloma.

The OmniAb platform typically uses genetically modified animals, including gene-edited rats, chickens, and mice, to produce therapeutic antibodies with human sequences. This platform is also a key project in Ligand's collaboration model, encompassing over 55 partners and being utilized in 250 projects, with up to 25 projects at the active or commercial stage as of the end of 2021. Previously, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. had licensed its OmniAb platform to multiple partners, including Paragon, LTZ, and Seismic.

In October last year, China Resources Double-Crane and Ligand Pharmaceuticals reached an agreement to jointly develop an oral small-molecule RNA polymerase inhibitor drug for the treatment of COVID-19. This drug utilizes another BEPro technology from Ligand Pharmaceuticals, and in the future, China Resources Double-Crane will have the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize this drug in major regions of Asia. BEPro technology is the latest generation of prodrug technology developed by Ligand Pharmaceuticals, which is suitable for improving the oral administration efficacy of nucleoside antiviral drugs. The technical difficulty in the research and development of nucleoside drugs lies in how to improve their oral bioavailability and target organ specificity.

Reference Source: Ligand to spin off J&J-partnered antibody unit with $70M in funding