Japan's Astellas Pharma has splashed out $300 million to U.S.-based Immunomic Therapeutics for its LAMP-vax platform to treat or prevent allergic diseases, gaining exclusive global development and commercialization rights, according to a press release. Astellas had an option to negotiate the license under a January deal that gave it exclusive Japanese rights to ASP4070 a Phase I vaccine candidate for Japanese red cedar pollen allergies. It also gained preclinical vaccine candidate ARA-LAMP-vax for peanut allergy. In addition to the $300 million up front, Immunomic gets 10% royalties on LAMP-vax products for allergic diseases, while retaining rights to LAMP-vax areas like cancer immunotherapy. "Astellas sets a strategic goal to advance new opportunities as part of our Strategic Plan 2015-2017, and we are actively investing in new therapeutic areas and new technologies/new modalities, in particular, regenerative medicine and next generation vaccines," Kenji Yasukawa, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Astellas, said in a statement. "We focus on immunology as one of the prioritized disease areas for our research and are exploring targets for new drug discoveries that involve several immune disorders, with the aim of developing a causal treatment for immune disorders." Release