Amylin/Lilly: Resurrections and Conversions
Executive Summary
Resurrections are an old biotech story. Now it's Amylin's happy duty to play the leading role--thanks to a product surprise. Its best known product, Symlin, delayed in the clinic, looks to be a smaller market product for diabetes than AC2993, which could compete with oral medicines. Lilly's signed up for a major deal on the product when its own competitive program failed. The deal itself gets Amylin a true partner's interest in the development and commercial prospects for the drug, but includes some interesting convertibility features that put Amylin at some risk if it doesn't perform.
You may also be interested in...
Bristol: Rebuilding a Diabetes Franchise--with Insulin
The great remaining religious divide in the drug industry is between those who reject and those who accept the fundamental therapeutic and economic importance of large molecule drugs. Diabetes is the central holy site in the schism since, for the most part, companies have either made small-molecule, oral therapies, or they've made injectable insulin. Bristol-Myers' deals for sustained-release insulin (with Flamel) and inhaled insulin (with QDose) mark both Bristol's increasing embrace of the large-molecule world as well as a novel strategy in the diabetes world.
BioVitrum/Amgen: A Sign of Early-Stage Deals to Come
Biovitrum's record-breaking deal with Amgen--the largest licensing transaction by a European Biotech player to date-secures for Biovitrum the financial and strategic means to help it become a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company. The deal is also strategically important to Amgen, giving the company a way into the primary care segment. But the price and risk are high: there's no clinical proof of efficacy on the compound and there's no competitive compound on the market, or even in late-stage clinical trials, proving the value of the target. Thus the broader implication for the industry: as the costs of late-stage licensing become prohibitive-and the compounds themselves unavailable-in-licensers are increasingly looking to earlier-stage products to bolster their pipelines, with deal prices, and risks, rising correspondingly.
BioVitrum/Amgen: A Sign of Early-Stage Deals to Come
Biovitrum's record-breaking deal with Amgen--the largest licensing transaction by a European Biotech player to date-secures for Biovitrum the financial and strategic means to help it become a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company. The deal is also strategically important to Amgen, giving the company a way into the primary care segment. But the price and risk are high: there's no clinical proof of efficacy on the compound and there's no competitive compound on the market, or even in late-stage clinical trials, proving the value of the target. Thus the broader implication for the industry: as the costs of late-stage licensing become prohibitive-and the compounds themselves unavailable-in-licensers are increasingly looking to earlier-stage products to bolster their pipelines, with deal prices, and risks, rising correspondingly.