Is Big Pharma Getting Desperate?
Lately, I’ve noticed that some of the deals between small companies and big pharma have been growing in terms of payments to the small companies. This leads me to wonder if some companies are getting desperate to bring in drug candidates and since there are so few projects with good to great potential, the price of these deals has increased.
As an example, Pozen, a small company in North Carolina recently struck a deal with Astra-Zeneca.
newsobserver.com | Pozen signs new drug partnership, stock jumps
Pozen gets an up-front payment of $40 million and the possibility of $160 million if certain regulatory events occur and another $175 million if certain sales are met once it is approved. Here is the Pozen’s press release. This is for a new pain reliever which is a combo of naproxen and esomeprazole in a fixed formulation. Both of these are already generics drugs themselves and the product PN200 is currently in phase II studies.
Here are some other deals within the last year or so and the values. Deals with no value disclosed are not included.
• Anadys and Novartis (June 2005) deal for ANA975 for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections up-front payment of $20 million and another $550 million in milestone payments. The compound is in phase I studies.
• Affymax and Takeda (Oct 2005) deal for Hematide, synthetic, peptide-based, designed to stimulate the production of red blood cells. Up-front $17 million plus $10 million in stock purchase and $75 million in milestone payments. The compound is in early phase II studies.
• Vertex and GlaxoSmithKline (Dec 2005) deal for VX-409 for pain. Up-front $20 million and $385 million in milestone payments. The compound is in preclinical studies.
• Vertex and Janssen Pharmaceuticals/Johnson&Johnson (June 2006) deal for VX-950 for hepatitis C virus. Up-front payment of $165 million and $380 Million in milestone payments. The compound is in phase II.
• Coley Pharmaceutical and Pfizer (2005) deal for CPG 7909 for the treatment, control and prevention of multiple cancer indications. Up-front payment of $50 million and $455 million in milestone payments. The drug is in phase II.
I’m sure there are many more but based on my experiences these deals seem to be getting better for the small company, especially the for early phase compounds that seems to have potential.
Feel free to comment or send me emails about other deals I may have overlooked. Here are some search results form Yahoo and Google that find quite a few of these.
Resouce
• upfront up-front payment milestone pharmaceutical - Yahoo! Search Results
• upfront up-front payment milestone pharmaceutical - Google Search
Technorati Tags: drug development, pharmaceutical deals
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August 9th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Another deal I forgot to mention was Metabolex and J&J
• Metabolex and J&J June 2006 for MBX-2044 for type II diabetes. Upfront payment of $40 million and milestones of $508 million. The Compound is in phase 2/3.