With 16 Big Pharma partnerships worth more than $3.3 billion in potential milestones and royalty payments, Array BioPharma Inc. is poised to turn from a net loss clinical-stage biopharma to a revenue-growing drug seller.

Those reasons could also make it an acquisition target for several Big Pharma partners. The partnerships with the most potential include work with AstraZenecaplc on a Phase 2 non-small-cell cancer drug known as selumetinib and a newly inked partnership with Genentech Inc., a member of Roche Holding AG, on two drug candidates focused on cancer, one owned by each company.

The deals' benefit for Array, besides $28 million up front and up to $685 million in milestone payments, is that Array can achieve double-digit royalty payments if either company's candidate proves successful against cancer.

Putting Array's deep pipeline portfolio aside -- which includes asthma and diabetes candidates in addition to oncology -- not paying out those royalties could be reason enough for Roche to consider Array an acquisition candidate.

"I think we've had three of the signature deals in biotech over the last few years," said Array chief executive and president Robert E. Conway during a presentation at the UBS Global Life Sciences conference.

The company's long history of partnering has also allowed it to limit the amount of dilutive capital it has used to fund its research. Conway said Array has funded itself through $160 million in nondilutive capital coming from partnerships with companies such as Novartis AG, Amgen Inc. and Celgene Corp.

Array is not merely a partnership company, however. ARRY-520, a Phase 2 candidate targeting multiple myeloma, is a drug Array wants to commercialize on its own in the U.S., partly because of the $3.5 billion market for such treatments.

Conway said the company may look to partner the drug internationally, however.