On October 27, 2020, Histogen Inc., a clinical-stage therapeutics company focused on developing potential first-in-class therapeutics that ignite the body’s natural process to repair and maintain healthy biological function, announced it has entered into a Collaborative Development and Commercialization Agreement with Amerimmune LLC to jointly develop emricasan, an orally active caspase inhibitor, for the treatment of COVID-19. Additionally, Histogen has received Investigational New Drug (IND) approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to initiate a Phase 1 study of emricasan in mild-COVID-19 patients to assess safety and tolerability.

Amerimmune, which will lead the development efforts of emricasan, has selected clinical sites at two major medical centers in the New York City metropolitan area to conduct the study. Amerimmune is pursuing non-dilutive funding in order to support the clinical program and anticipates initiating the Phase 1 study as early as the end of 2020. Wilson Sonsini represented Amerimmune in the transaction.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Histogen will retain ownership and oversight over emricasan and responsibility for all regulatory filings and maintaining its existing caspase inhibitor patent portfolio. Amerimmune, in collaboration with Histogen, will fund and lead the emricasan development efforts and maintain its own portfolio of patents for caspase inhibition and immunotherapy.

Additionally, Amerimmune has been granted an option to commercialize emricasan under certain conditions for the sole purpose of supporting future third-party partnering transactions. Should any such partnering transaction emerge, Histogen and Amerimmune will share profits equally. The parties will manage the collaboration under a joint development and partnering committee governance structure.

The Wilson Sonsini team that represented Amerimmune and assisted Amerimmune’s in-house legal lead Dan Chambers in the transaction includes John Wehrli and Ian Edvalson.

For more information, please see Histogen’s press release.