Ayala Pharmaceuticals Inc (ADXS)

[James salmon]

Aduro signs another big deal. Same technology as Advaxis but different platform. Advaxis platform has been published as being superior than Aduro platform.

A banner year for Berkeley, CA-based Aduro just got better. The biotech has inked its second licensing pact of the year with Johnson & Johnson, which kicked in a $30 million upfront and boosted its total milestone package to the $1 billion-plus category.

With the J&J Innovation Center in the Bay Area leading the way, the pharma giant grabbed rights to new product candidates for lung and other types of cancer, convinced that Aduro's platform tech holds great promise for beefing up its oncology pipeline. J&J's $817 million deal includes potential milestones for successful development efforts as it hitched a ride on a tech platform focused on the ability of engineered Listeria monocytogenes strains to kick up an immune response against cancer.

Immunotherapies have emerged as the single hottest R&D strategy of the year. And Aduro, a 2014 Fierce 15 company, has attracted close attention for its use of a failed cancer vaccine--GVAX--as part of a combo approach to direct an attack on cancer. J&J is known for making ambitious plays in this field when it finds a new technology that it likes. And the pharma giant appears to be all in on Aduro.

Back in May J&J signed a $365 million deal covering prostate cancer, a major focus for J&J. The pharma giant also kicked in for a recent $55 million venture round to fund an expanded Phase IIb trial. Less