Company: ATRA
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-035507
Chunk: 141

Company: Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 141
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 companies.

Our relationships with customers and third party payors will be subject to applicable anti-kickback, fraud and abuse, privacy and other laws and regulations, which could expose us to criminal sanctions, civil penalties, contractual damages, reputational harm and diminished profits and future earnings. 

Healthcare providers, including physicians, and third party payors will play a primary role in the recommendation and prescription of our product and any product candidates for which we obtain regulatory approval. Our current and future arrangements with third party payors and customers may expose us to broadly applicable federal and state fraud and abuse and other healthcare laws and regulations that may constrain the business or financial arrangements and relationships through which we conduct research and would market, sell and distribute our products. As a biopharmaceutical company, even though we do not and will not control referrals of healthcare services or bill directly to Medicare, Medicaid or other third party payors, federal and state healthcare laws and regulations pertaining to fraud and abuse and patients’ rights are and will be applicable to our business. If we obtain FDA approval of any of our product candidates and our partners begin commercializing those products in the United States, our potential exposure under such laws will increase significantly, and our costs associated with compliance with such laws are also likely to increase. These laws may impact, among other things, our current activities with principal investigators and research patients, as well as proposed and future sales, marketing and education programs, distribution agreements, discounting, commission compensation, certain patient support offerings, and other business arrangements generally. In addition, the approval and commercialization of our product and any of our product candidates outside the United States will also likely subject us to foreign equivalents of such healthcare laws, among other foreign laws. See Part I, Item 1, “Government Regulation and Product Approval – U.S. Health Care Laws” for additional details on applicable federal and state healthcare laws and regulations that may affect our business operations.

Efforts to ensure that our business arrangements with third parties comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. It is possible that governmental authorities will conclude that our business practices do not comply with current or future statutes, regulations or case law involving applicable healthcare laws and regulations. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other governmental regulations, we may be subject to significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, imprisonment, exclusion from government-funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, disgorgement, additional reporting requirements or oversight if we become subject to a corporate