AstraZeneca sells off rights to beta-blocker for $300 million

pharmafile | May 22, 2017 | News story | Sales and Marketing |  AstraZeneca, Recordati, Seloken 

AstraZeneca announced that it had sold the European rights to its drug, Seloken (metoprolol), to Italian pharmaceutical company Recordati. The deal sees AZ receive $300 million for the rights, alongside further royalties.

The drug is a beta-blocker than can be used in the treatment for disturbances in cardiac rhythm or functional heart disorders with palpitations. The deal makes sense for Recordati, a company that specialises mainly in cardiovascular treatments.

European sales of Seloken reached $110 million in 2016, of which AZ will continue to receive tiered royalties that will began as double-digit percentages of sales. The company will also continue to manufacture and supply the medicine to Recordati.

Mark Mallon, Executive Vice President, Global Product & Portfolio Strategy at AstraZeneca, said: “This agreement allows us to concentrate our resources on bringing multiple new medicines to patients. Recordati’s expertise in cardiovascular disease and established European salesforce will help to expand the commercial potential of the Seloken brands, which are mature medicines for the new AstraZeneca.”

As Mallon mentioned, AZ interests currently lie elsewhere as it seeks to bolster a flagging portfolio of drugs, as it continues to battle the loss of patents on its previously largest selling drugs. The main hope lies in its immunotherapy treatment – Imfinzi has already posted positive results for the therapy in lung cancer this month, which has boosted people’s expectation for the MYSTIC trial.

For Recordati’s part, it gives them an opportunity to gain the rights to an ageing but solid-selling drug across Europe.

“We are very pleased with the agreement that we have entered into with AstraZeneca for the rights to their brands of metoprolol in Europe” stated Andrea Recordati, Vice Chairman and CEO. “Metoprolol is  a  widely  used  drug  in  all  European  countries  and  the  market  position  achieved  by  the  AstraZeneca  brands will enable us to reinforce our product portfolios in a number of our European subsidiaries, in  particular in  Poland, France and Germany. Furthermore, existing  sales  of  the metoprolol  brands will  provide  the  base  to  enter  new  markets  and  thus  complete  our  European  geographical  footprint.”

Ben Hargreaves