Oncoceutics Inc., Sorrento Therapeutics Inc., The Scripps Research Institute deal

Scripps exclusively licensed to Sorrento a patent covering the correct chemical structure for Oncoceutics' ONC201. Scripps received an undisclosed upfront payment and will be eligible for milestones and royalties. ONC201 was originally discovered by Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (Ingelheim, Germany) and distributed by NIH's NCI. Researchers at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center identified its antitumor effects in mouse models and exclusively licensed the findings to Oncoceutics. Scientists at Scripps then discovered an error in the chemical structure for the compound and applied for a patent on the corrected structure. Sorrento said it does not believe Oncoceutics has the "freedom to operate to market the compound it calls 'ONC201.'"

In a statement addressing the error, Oncoceutics argued that "a corrected presentation of a publicly available molecule with no new inventive subject matter is not likely sufficient to obtain a new patent on ONC201." While Oncoceutics agreed with the newly reported structure, the company said "the fact that the drawing included in the Boehringer Ingelheim documents, the NCI literature characterizing the compound, and ultimately [Oncoceutics'] patent does not accurately represent the isomeric details of the structure does not impact Oncoceutics' underlying invention." The company added that it developed a "robust production process" based on Boehringer's synthesis route that "defines and consistently produces active compound that is functionally identical" to the active compound distributed by the NCI. The company said the production process is part of the IND application FDA accepted in February. ...