On January 24, 2018, Spark Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ONCE), a fully integrated gene therapy company dedicated to challenging the inevitability of genetic disease, announced it has entered into a licensing agreement with Novartis Pharmaceuticals to develop and commercialize investigational voretigene neparvovec outside the United States, while Spark Therapeutics will continue to exclusively commercialize LUXTURNA™ (voretigene neparvovec-ryzl) in the US. Under the agreement, Spark Therapeutics will retain regulatory responsibility for obtaining European Medicines Agency approval for investigational voretigene neparvovec. Spark Therapeutics also entered into a separate agreement to manufacture and supply investigational voretigene neparvovec to Novartis. No other programs in Spark Therapeutics' pipeline are part of this agreement.
Steve Barrett led WilmerHale's representation of Spark on this deal, with a team that included Lia Der Marderosian, Ryan Mitteness, Jenna Ventorino, Lily Wound, Alyce Chen and Alex Civetta.
Spark's press release is available at www.sparktx.com.