ROCKVILLE, Md., April 27, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:NABI) announced today that it has completed the Phase I trial for two of the PentaStaphTM antigens that began in December 2009. Completion of this trial was the final milestone associated with the sale of the PentaStaph vaccine candidate to GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals S.A. (GSK). As a result of completing this milestone, Nabi has received $5 million under the agreement governing Nabi's sale of PentaStaphTM (Pentavalent S. aureus Vaccine) and related assets to GSK.
Nabi sold PentaStaph and related technologies to GSK for a total consideration of $46 million, including $26 million associated with accomplishing four milestone tasks. Including this milestone, Nabi has now earned all of the $26 million in PentaStaph milestone payments. In addition to the milestone payments earned, Nabi received a cash payment of $21.5 million when the transaction closed in November 2009 that included $20 million associated with the transaction close, $1 million associated with the sale of a related pre-clinical program for a vaccine against S.epidermedis and $0.5 million as reimbursement for license fees and clinical materials previously manufactured for use in the Phase I trial.
"I am extremely proud of our accomplishments associated with the sale of the PentaStaph program having achieved all of the PentaStaph milestones in just over a year since closing the sale transaction," said Dr. Raafat Fahim, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nabi Biopharmaceuticals. "We have successfully completed all the milestone tasks under the sale agreement."
About Nabi Biopharmaceuticals
Nabi Biopharmaceuticals leverages its experience and knowledge in powering the immune system to develop products that target serious medical conditions in the areas of nicotine addiction and gram-positive bacterial infections. Nabi Biopharmaceuticals is currently developing NicVAX® (Nicotine Conjugate Vaccine), an innovative and proprietary investigational vaccine for treatment of nicotine addiction and prevention of smoking relapse. The company is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. For additional information about Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, please visit www.nabi.com
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are not strictly historical are forward-looking statements and include statements about products in development, results and analyses of clinical trials and studies, research and development expenses, cash expenditures, licensure applications and approvals, and alliances and partnerships, among other matters. You can identify these forward-looking statements because they involve our expectations, intentions, beliefs, plans, projections, anticipations, or other characterizations of future events or circumstances. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of any number of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, risks relating to our ability to conduct and obtain successful results from our two Phase III clinical trials for NicVAX; GSK's failure to exercise its option for and successfully commercialize NicVAX; GSK's failure to successfully develop and commercialize any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine; our ability to commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise its option for NicVAX; our ability to raise sufficient new capital resources to fully develop and commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise the NicVAX option; our ability to attract, retain and motivate key employees; our ability to collect any further milestones and royalty payments under the PhosLo agreement; the ability to obtain regulatory approval for NicVAX and any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine in the U.S. or other markets; our ability to successfully contract with contract manufacturing organizations for the manufacture and supply of NicVAX; our ability to comply with reporting and payment obligations under government rebate and pricing programs; and loss of full use of our net operating loss carry forwards. These factors are more fully discussed, as are other factors, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 25, 2010 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.