Abbott signs $400 million deal with Reata
pharmafile | December 13, 2011 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Abbott
Abbott has signed a new deal with inflammatory specialist Reata for its portfolio of early-stage compounds.
Abbott and Reata Pharmaceuticals have signed a deal worth $400 million to jointly develop and commercialise Reata’s portfolio of second-generation, oral antioxidant inflammation modulators.
The agreement is in addition to the partnership between the two companies announced in September last year, in which Abbott paid $450 million to get certain rights to bardoxolone methyl, currently in Phase III trials for chronic kidney disease.
Abbott will hope these deals can stand its pipeline in good stead as it faces US patent expiry of its arthritis treatment Humira in 2016, which made over $6.5 billion in global sales last year.
There is also an extra impetus for a stronger early-stage pipeline after the firm announced it would split in two next year, with one firm focusing on pharmaceuticals and the other on medical devices.
The collaboration includes a number of molecules in a broad range of therapeutic areas, including pulmonary, central nervous system disorders and immunology.
Abbott and Reata will equally share costs and profits for all new drugs coming from the agreement in all newly licensed indications, except for rheumatoid arthritis and certain other autoimmune diseases, in which Abbott will take 70% of costs and profits and Reata will take 30 per cent.
The deal also includes a research agreement in which the companies will work together to discover new molecules that are similar to those already in Reata’s pipeline.
The drugs are all still at a pre-clinical stage, but Abbott said it expects to start human trials on the first compound from this collaboration next year.
John Leonard, senior VP of pharmaceuticals R&D at Abbott, said: “This partnership allows Abbott to enhance its promising research pipeline across multiple therapeutic areas.
“Accumulating data has established the potential for antioxidant inflammation modulators in neuroscience and immunology, and we look forward to expanding our knowledge through further research.”
Antioxidant inflammation modulators (AIMs) are potent activators of the transcription factor Nrf2.
Activation of Nrf2 promotes the production of a wide range of antioxidant, detoxification, and anti-inflammatory genes and also inhibits NF-κB, a transcription factor that regulates many pro-inflammatory enzymes.
Suppression of Nrf2 and activation of NF-κB have been associated with numerous chronic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic kidney disease, neurodegenerative disease and COPD.
Ben Adams
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