Company: LGNZZ
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000886163-25-000012
Chunk: 5

Company: LIGAND PHARMACEUTICALS INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 5
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 occurring antimicrobial and immunomodulatory effects to develop new therapies for unmet medical needs across multiple therapeutic areas. Our nitric oxide platform allows for “tunable” dosing, permitting an adjustable drug release profile to allow proprietary formulations that target a broad range of indications. NITRICIL is currently leveraged in one FDA approved product, ZELSUVMI. Clinical development success positions the NITRICIL platform well for future expansions into other indications.

HepDirect, LTP and BEPro Technology Platform

The HepDirect and LTP technology platforms are our proprietary liver-targeting prodrug technologies that can deliver many different chemical classes of drugs to the liver by using a chemical modification that renders an active pharmaceutical ingredient (“API”) biologically inactive until cleaved by a liver-specific enzyme. These technologies may improve the efficacy and/or safety of certain drugs and can be applied to marketed or new drug products to treat liver diseases or diseases caused by hemostasis imbalance of circulating molecules controlled by the liver. 

The BEPro technology platform is a next generation prodrug technology distinct from HepDirect and LTP prodrug technologies, expanding use to non-liver related diseases. BEPro is specifically applicable to nucleotides and nucleotide analogs 

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for the development of compounds with improved product profiles. Ligand has demonstrated benefits in cell penetration and oral, intravenous and inhaled pharmacokinetics with BEPro-enabled nucleotide analogs.

Pelican Expression Technology (owned by Primrose Bio, of which Ligand owns 31.4% as of December 31, 2024)

The Pelican Expression Technology platform is a robust, validated, cost-effective and scalable platform for recombinant protein production and is especially well suited for complex, large-scale proteins. Global manufacturers have demonstrated consistent success with the platform, and the technology is currently outlicensed for multiple commercial and development-stage programs. The versatility of the platform has been demonstrated in the production of enzymes, peptides, antibody derivatives and engineered non-natural proteins. The platform contributes significant value to biopharmaceutical development programs by shortening timelines and reducing costs associated with research and development through commercial manufacturing of therapeutics and vaccines. Given pharmaceutical industry trends toward large molecules with increased structural complexities, the Pelican Expression Technology platform is well positioned to meet these growing needs as one of the most comprehensive and broadly available, commercially validated protein production platforms in the industry. 

2024 and Recent Investment Highlights

On February 25, 2025, we announced that we entered into a royalty financing agreement with Castle