Dive Brief:
- Spanish company Almirall has hooked up with Copenhagen-based Nuevolution to develop and commercialize the Danish biopharma's small molecule RORγt inverse agonist program in inflammatory skin diseases and psoriatic arthritis.
- Almirall gains rights to develop drugs through to the market; Nuevolution gets an upfront financial boost of €11.2 million ($11.9 million), along with development and regulatory milestone payments of up to €172 million ($182.9 million), sales milestones of up to €270 million ($287.1 million) and undisclosed tiered royalties.
- The two companies will work together to identify further RORγt inhibitors, and Almirall retains an exclusive option for development within dermatology and beyond.
Dive Insight:
One of the focus points of the agreement between Almirall and Nuevolution is psoriatic arthritis. Psoriasis is a skin condition that affects almost 3% of the world's population. As many as 42% of people with psoriasis will develop psoriatic arthritis, which affects joints, tendons and nails. Current treatment for psoriatic arthritis involves NSAIDs, corticosteroids and disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), depending on severity.
"This agreement with Nuevolution will allow us to develop RORγt inhibitors for the potential treatment of dermatology diseases and psoriatic arthritis, and this program includes novel NCEs with potential to be one of the first entries into a new class of oral non-steroidal anti inflammatories,"said Eduardo Sanchiz, CEO of Almirall.
Almirall has a dermatology pipeline, with products from preclinical to pending approval, including a number of products in psoriasis and dermatitis. This agreement will boost its early stage pipeline and provide access to potential anti-inflammatories with a new mode of action.
Nuevolution focuses on oncology and chronic inflammatory disease, based on its Chemetics drug discovery platform. Since its founding in 2001, it has signed 15 agreements, including with big pharma such as Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim, and oncology research institutions including Cancer Research Technology and Institute of Cancer Research. The agreement with Almirall follows a high price-tag multi-target agreement with Amgen in October 2016, where Nuevolution will get up to $140 million in milestones per target in oncology and neuroscience.