SELLAS Life Sciences Inks License Deal With GenFleet Therapeutics For CDK9 Inhibitor; Stock Down

(RTTNews) - SELLAS Life Sciences Group, Inc. (SLS), late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company focused on development of cancer therapies, announced it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with GenFleet Therapeutics (Shanghai), Inc. that grants rights to SELLAS for the development and commercialization of GFH009, a highly selective small molecule cyclin-dependent kinase 9 inhibitor, across all therapeutic and diagnostic uses worldwide outside of China.

GFH009, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials in the United States and China, is a highly selective next-generation CDK9 inhibitor. CDK9 activity has been shown to negatively correlate with overall survival in a number of cancer types, including hematologic cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia ("AML") and lymphomas, as well as solid cancers, such as osteosarcoma, pediatric soft tissue sarcomas, and melanoma, and endometrial, lung, prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.

Under the financial terms of the agreement, SELLAS will pay to GenFleet an initial payment of $10 million as an upfront license and technology transfer fee. The company will also pay development and regulatory milestone payments for up to three indications totaling up to $48 million and milestone payments totaling up to $92 million in upon the achievement of certain sales thresholds of GFH009 in the United States and rest of the world.

SELLAS will also pay GenFleet tiered royalties based on a percentage of annual net sales of GFH009 ranging from the low to high single digits.

SLS closed Thursday's trading at $6.68, down $0.18 or 2.62%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further dropped $1.63 or 24.40% in the after-hours trading.