Alpine Immune Sciences and Horizon Therapeutics have signed an exclusive licence and collaboration agreement to develop protein-based therapies to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

As agreed, Horizon will gain exclusive rights to develop and commercialise up to four preclinical candidates from Alpine’s discovery platform. This will include licencing of a lead candidate and joint development of other novel candidates.

According to an Alpine statement, these candidates include previously undisclosed multi-specific fusion protein-based therapy candidates.

Under the deal, Alpine will receive an upfront payment of $25m along with a $15m equity investment from Horizon.

In addition, the company is eligible to receive up to $381m per programme, or a total of about $1.52bn, in milestone payments as well as tiered royalties on global net sales.

Alpine president and R&D head Stanford Peng said: “With our combined expertise, we hope to accelerate and expand the potential clinical impact of our discovery platform on autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.”

As per the terms of the agreement, Alpine is responsible for advancing candidate molecules to pre-defined preclinical stage. Subsequently, Horizon will take up the development and marketing activities.