NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[biosectinvestor]

First of all, the combo agreement does not affect NWBO’s complete and full rights to DCVax-L, to which they have had the sole patent.

Secondly, the company approached UCLA to manage the trials and the development of new patents was a part of that agreement. NWBO is also an inventor of that agreement and under co-development circumstances, they will still hold the full rights and license though there may be some royalties or other payments. There may be more to it. But I believe they still receive all rights to even the combination because they own DCVax-L, and, by the way, the other companies own the rights to their drugs.

It really gains value only when those other companies and NWBO sign combination therapy agreements to create a new treatment together and then, possibly, the University may get some value out of that as happens sometimes. That could come in terms of doing primary research and/or some royalty if the combination is commercialized as a new drug. But at the moment it has no impact on DCVax-L as a stand-alone drug, even if doctors choose to separately prescribe other drugs. It’s also not granted yet and the final grant, while it may be substantially narrow, the original claims do block other companies from making those claims, so as a blocking patent, it is very useful even for claims not awarded as the original claim was very broad, broader even than DCVax-l with x drug. It is more along the lines of dendritic cells and with any PD1, PD-L1, etc., with many other kinds of immunotherapies. But those other combination claims were not granted because they are as of yet speculative. But they are also effectively blocked for others, giving the company and university freedom to research broad possible combos without themselves being blocked by another’s patent.