Robert W. Treut

Experience

• Represented Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals in a multi-million dollar global license agreement with Roche and Genentech directed towards the development and commercialization of vixarelimab, a potential treatment for fibrosis.
• Represented Shanghai-based biotechnology company LianBio as issuer counsel in a $325 million initial public offering and in strategic licensing transactions with:
  
  • Tarsus Pharmaceuticals in a $200 million deal for an eye therapy.
  • Landos Biopharma in a $218 million deal to develop and commercialize two ulcerative colitis drugs.
  • Lyra Therapeutics for an intra-nasal drug to treat chronic rhinosinusitis.
  • Nanobiotix for an oncology drug.
  • ReViral for a respiratory syncytial virus collaboration.
• Advised Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited in an exclusive collaboration and license agreement with JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. to commercialize JR-141 for the treatment of Hunter syndrome.
• Advised Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals in a $662 million China and greater Asia Pacific region collaboration with Huadong directed towards severe autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
• Represented Shape Therapeutics in a strategic collaboration with Roche worth up to $3 billion to use Shape’s RNA-editing platform and adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology to identify and develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. This is one of the biggest collaboration deals of 2021 according to BioWorld.
• Advised Obsidian Therapeutics in connection with a collaboration and licensing agreement with Vertex Pharmaceuticals focused on the discovery of novel therapies that regulate gene editing for the treatment of serious diseases, which involved up to $75 million in upfront payments and $1.3 billion in potential payments to Obsidian. 
• Advised a global pharmaceutical company in an exclusive collaboration with a publicly traded biotechnology company to exclusively co-develop and co-commercialize a clinical stage small molecule inhibitor for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. The pharmaceutical company agreed to pay over $550 million in upfront payments, agreed to purchase over $450 million of the biotechnology company’s common stock, may also pay up to $1.125 billion in potential milestone payments, will share costs of development globally as well as profits and losses in certain countries, and received exclusive options and rights of first negotiation with respect to future programs directed towards the treatment of certain neurodegenerative diseases.
• Advised Takeda in a co-development and co-commercialization collaboration and license agreement with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals worth up to $1 billion to develop ARO-AAT to treat AATLD, a liver disease. 
• Represented uniQure N.V. in a $1.6 billion licensing agreement to provide biopharmaceutical company CSL Behring with exclusive global rights to uniQure’s investigational gene therapy for patients with hemophilia B.
• Represented Akebia Therapeutics in connection with its exclusive license agreement with Vifor Pharma Group, pursuant to which Vifor is granted the exclusive right to distribute Akebia’s Phase 3 oral anemia drug vadadustat through its network of U.S. dialysis centers and other approved distribution channels.
• Represented BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the licensing of commercialization rights in Japan for BCX7353, a preventative treatment for hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks, to Torii Pharmaceutical, Co., a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
• Represented Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. in a collaboration and license agreement with StrideBio Inc., a North Carolina-based biotechnology company, to develop gene therapies for up to eight central nervous system (CNS) and neuromuscular targets.
• Represented a leading biotechnology company in its agreement for exclusive commercialization rights to biosimilars in a number of countries across the globe.
• Represented Sarepta Therapeutics in the negotiation of an exclusive license agreement with Lysogene to develop a gene therapy directed towards the treatment of Mucopolysaccharidosis type IIIA (MPS IIIA), a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disorder for which there are currently no treatment options.