Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
BMS licensed (not acquired) two Exelixis oncology compounds—cabozantinib and XL281—for $195M upfront plus up to $150M in sales milestones, but walked away entirely by October 2011. Exelixis kept cabozantinib, turning it into Cabometyx, its own blockbuster franchise generating roughly $555M in quarterly sales by Q1 2026.
BMS never acquired Exelixis — it was a 2008 licensing deal for cabozantinib/XL281 that BMS fully unwound by 2011, handing back the asset that became Exelixis's own blockbuster Cabometyx
Full analysis, sources & comparables →BMS made a nonrefundable $195M upfront payment for worldwide development and commercialization rights to XL184 and XL281, with co-development of XL184 in the…
Cabozantinib received FDA approval for progressive metastatic medullary thyroid cancer based on the EXAM Phase 3 trial showing median PFS of 11.2 months vs…
Source summaries from our enrichment pipeline; follow links for originals.
All 4 sources with sentiment breakdown →
$195M upfront + $45M 2009 + up to $150M sales milestones + double-digit ex-US royalties; XL184 (cabozantinib) MET/VEGFR/RET, XL281 RAF kinase oncology
BMS never acquired Exelixis — it was a 2008 licensing deal for cabozantinib/XL281 that BMS fully unwound by 2011, handing back the asset that became Exelixis's own blockbuster Cabometyx
Assessment window: 15yr post-close.
2K US cases/yr
Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare neuroendocrine tumor of the parafollicular C-cells, ~25% hereditary (MEN2A/MEN2B, RET germline) and ~75% sporadic (with somatic RET mutations in ~50%). Surgery is curative early but metastatic disease has historically had no effective systemic therapy, making RET/VEGFR inhibitors transformational.
At the time of the December 2008 BMS-Exelixis collaboration, metastatic MTC had no approved systemic therapy. XL184 (cabozantinib) — a multi-kinase inhibitor of MET, VEGFR2, and RET — entered the field alongside AstraZeneca's vandetanib (ZD6474), which became the first FDA-approved MTC drug as Caprelsa in April 2011. Cabozantinib followed with the EXAM Phase 3 readout (median PFS 11.2 vs 4.0 months, HR 0.28) and FDA approval as Cometriq in November 2012. The 2008 BMS deal terms — $195M upfront, up to $150M sales milestones, double-digit ex-US royalties — looked rich at the time, but BMS terminated the cabozantinib portion in June 2010 with a $17M transition payment, citing pipeline reprioritization. Exelixis took cabozantinib to approval alone, and the drug went on to become a multi-billion-dollar franchise (Cometriq in MTC; Cabometyx in 2L/1L renal cell carcinoma 2016/2017 and HCC 2019), making the BMS termination one of the most-cited 'walked away too early' decisions in modern oncology BD.
| Deal | Year | Value | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Exelixis Inc. (this deal) | 2008 | $240M | 10 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Medarex Inc. | 2009 | $2.4B | 92 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Celgene Corporation | 2019 | $74.0B | 77 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / MyoKardia Inc. | 2020 | $13.1B | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Karuna Therapeutics | 2023 | $14.0B | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. | 2011 | — | 76 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company / SystImmune Inc. | 2023 | $8.4B | 71 |