Purdue receives $100M for Pluvicto royalties
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The Purdue Research Foundation said Wednesday it has received more than $100 million from Owl Rock in New York for a portion of its royalty interest in the prostate cancer drug Pluvicto. Purdue plans to use the funding to further support research at the university.
Pluvicto was developed by Dr. Philip Low, Purdue’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery. The drug is designed to treat patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who have failed multiple prior therapies.
The drug received FDA approval in early 2022.
Pluvicto is sold by Novartis, which picked up the drug when it acquired Low’s company, Endocyte Corp., in 2018 for $2 billion. But Purdue had secured rights to royalties from Pluvicto through its license agreement with Endocyte.
Owl Rock is a division of Blue Owl Capital (NYSE: OWL), an investment asset management firm in New York. Sandip Agarwala, managing director and global head of life sciences at Blue Owl, said royalty transactions are a key component of the firms’ investment strategy in the life sciences.
Brooke Beier, senior vice president of Purdue Innovates, said the agreement with Blue Owl strengthens the university’s ability to support Purdue researchers through enhanced commercialization and funding opportunities.
“Purdue University researchers discover and develop innovations improving the world, one of the key aspects of a land-grant university,” Beier said in a news release. “Pluvicto is one example of successful intellectual property protection, licensing and, ultimately, commercialization that we hope will unlock the potential for many more Purdue technologies to make an impact.”
The university did not specify how much of its royalty interest in Pluvicto it sold to Owl Rock.