Hikma and Rakuten Medical sign exclusive licensing agreement for AlluminoxTM platform cancer treatment for the Middle East and North Africa

Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC (Hikma), the multinational pharmaceutical company, today announces an exclusive licensing and commercialisation agreement with Rakuten Medical, Inc. (Rakuten Medical), a global biotechnology company developing and commercialising precision, cell targeting therapies based on its proprietary Alluminox™ platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, Hikma has an exclusive license to commercialise products in Rakuten Medical’s pipeline using its photoimmunotherapy technology platform, Alluminox™, in all its MENA markets.

Commenting on the agreement, Mazen Darwazah, Hikma’s Executive Vice Chairman and President of MENA, said: “This agreement allows us to work with an excellent global partner to strengthen our growing portfolio in oncology and biotechnology. Most importantly, this allows us to bring a potentially transformative technology to cancer patients in MENA, helping to put better health within reach, everyday.”

Mickey Mikitani, Co-CEO of Rakuten Medical, added: “We are already developing Alluminox™ treatment in several countries and regions, including the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and India, and this agreement further accelerates our global expansion. With Hikma's strong regional footprint and medical expertise, we expect the Alluminox™ platform to make significant progress in MENA.”

About Hikma

Hikma helps put better health within reach every day for millions of people around the world. For more than 45 years, we've been creating high-quality medicines and making them accessible to the people who need them. Headquartered in the UK, we are a global company with a local presence across North America, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Europe.

About Rakuten Medical

Rakuten Medical, Inc. is a global biotechnology company developing and commercializing precision, cell targeting therapies based on its proprietary Alluminox™ platform, which, in pre-clinical studies, has been shown to induce rapid and selective cell killing and tumor necrosis. Alluminox™ therapies have not yet been approved outside of Japan. Rakuten Medical is committed to its mission to conquer cancer by delivering our innovative treatments as quickly as possible to as many patients as possible all over the world. The company has offices in 6 countries, including the United States, where it is headquartered, Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Switzerland and India. For more information, visit www.rakuten-med.com.

About Alluminox™ platform[1]

The Alluminox™ platform is an investigational technology platform based on a cancer therapy called photoimmunotherapy, which was developed by Dr. Hisataka Kobayashi and team from the National Cancer Institute in the United States. Rakuten Medical is developing the Alluminox™ platform as a technology consisting of a drug, device, and other related components. The drug component of the platform consists of a targeting moiety conjugated with one or more dyes leading to selective cell surface binding. The device component consists of a light source that locally illuminates the targeted cells with light to transiently activate the drug.