Deals & Data
Avanir Pharmaceuticals disclosed late-stage trial data which showed its drug Zenvia met all secondary endpoints in treating the psuedobulbar effect in patients with underlying multiple sclerosis, according to Dow Jones Newswire. The news sent the Aliso Viejo-based company’s stock up 9.4% to $2.22. Shares have surged from 25 cents in February, and Tuesday's disclosure - made at the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association - comes four days after a similar data release was made at a conference in the Czech Republic. Friday's release looked at a subset of the data, while Tuesday's disclosure reviewed all of the trial's patients.
La Jolla has scheduled a special shareholder meeting for Oct. 30 to vote on a plan of liquidation and dissolution, according to Xconomy. If approved, the biotech expects to satisfy remaining debts and distribute remaining cash to shareholders. With estimated cash of $4.4 million at the end of August, the company estimates the distribution to the company’s 66 million shareholders would fall between 2.8 cents and 4.5 cents a share.
Xconomy also reported that there was another volley in the court battle between two of the county’s largest biotech companies. San Diego-based Illumina and its Solexa subsidiary are countersuing Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies and Applied Biosystems in a patent dispute over gene sequencing technologies. In a statement today, Illumina and Solexa denied allegations that Life and Applied Biosystems raise in their Sept. 21 lawsuit, assert that Applied Biosystems’ patents are invalid, and allege that Life is infringing on four Solexa patents. A Life spokesman says, “We believe these claims are without merit and we will vigorously defend our intellectual property.”
Illumina also licensed worldwide rights to commercially develop Orchid Cellmark’s proprietary single base nucleotide extension technology for forensics and diagnostics. Princeton, N.J.-based Orchid is one of the largest providers of forensic DNA testing services used by the criminal justice system, according to Xconomy. Orchid says Illumina agreed to pay $850,000 upfront and up to $150,000 in milestone payments. Although Orchid retains the right to use its patents, Illumina received exclusive rights to sublicense the technology. Orchid will receive royalties on any such deals.
bioTheranostics, a bioMérieux company that discovers, develops and commercializes new molecular diagnostic tests in oncology, announced that the company has signed a two-year agreement with Lab21 to commercialize the bioTheranostics THEROS CancerTYPE ID molecular cancer classifier in the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland and Middle East countries. The agreement is effective immediately.
San Diego-based molecular diagnostic company Gen-Probe said it will pay $60 million in cash to acquire Prodesse, a privately held medical diagnostics company in Waukesha, WI.
The San Diego drug company Santarus said it entered a license agreement with the European company Norgine for the Santarus drug Zegerid, the Union-Tribune reports..
The deal gives Norgine rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize the drug, which treats certain gastrointestinal conditions, in Western, Central and Eastern Europe.
Santarus receives a $2.5 million upfront fee, as well as royalties and up to $10 million in potential milestone payments.
Transdel, which plans to bring the first FDA-approved topical painkiller to market, said last week it will require additional funding. Cash at the San Diego-based company, which has been seeking a corporate partner for more than a year, was down to $2.9 million as of June 30, the San Diego Business Journal reports. Altogether, Transdel has spent $13.2 million developing Ketotransdel, its lead drug candidate.
Quidel and BioHelix said they have inked an agreement to jointly develop and commercialize in vitro molecular diagnostic tests. GenWeb Daily News reports that under the agreement, Quidel will fund and jointly develop with BioHelix assays to rapidly detect infectious pathogens in a non-instrumented, handheld format using BioHelix's isothermal amplification technology.