Kuros Biosciences’s licensee Checkmate Pharmaceuticals completes its IPO on NASDAQ

Schlieren (Zurich), Switzerland, September 9, 2020 – Kuros Biosciences, a leader in next generation bone graft technologies, notes the successful initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ (NASDAQ: CMPI) of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, which has licensed CMP-001, formerly known as CYT003, from Kuros.

Checkmate raised gross proceeds of $75 million in its recent IPO. Checkmate intends to use part of the net proceeds from the offering to fund the development of its product candidate CMP-001.

“We are excited to see the strong interest from investors in Checkmate, as demonstrated by its successful IPO, and we wish our partner success in developing CMP-001 to its full potential,” said Joost de Bruijn, Kuros’s CEO.

Checkmate is investigating CMP-001 across multiple tumor types in combination with several checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies. CMP-001 was licensed from Kuros Biosciences in 2015. Under the 2015 license agreement, Kuros stands to receive up to $56 million in development and regulatory milestone payments related to CMP-001. In addition, Kuros will receive royalties of high single-digit to low-teens percentages on future annual net sales of products covered by a licensed patent.

So far, Checkmate has paid upfront license fees and milestone payments of $2.25 million to Kuros.