Protein Sciences Corporation announced today that Astellas Pharma has submitted an application for marketing approval of recombinant influenza HA vaccine ASP7374 (marketed as Flublok® in the United States by Protein Sciences) to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan for the prevention of influenza. UMN Pharma, which is partnered with Astellas, holds an exclusive license from Protein Sciences for the development and marketing of Flublok in Japan. Protein Sciences will receive a significant milestone payment as a result of the filing.
The announcement made by Astellas Pharma and UMN Pharma can be found at http://ir.umnpharma.com/en/irnews/irnews-3759171731789488075/TopLink/TopLinkDocument/News_20140530_2.pdf.
Dan Adams, Executive Chairman and Global Head of Business Development at Protein Sciences said, "Japan is a terrific franchise for our BEVS platform as they value our broad technology platform for making recombinant vaccines and therapeutics that are fast to make, precise and pure. In addition to Japan, UMN Pharma has exclusively licensed Flublok and Panblok®, the pandemic version of Flublok, for the territories of China, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore."
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