Dive Brief:
- Celgene Corp. added to its deal spree in 2018, inking a research and development collaboration with Vividion Therapeutics Inc.
- The big biotech is paying $101 million upfront, including an equity investment, for Vividion to use its platform technology to develop small molecule drugs for oncology, inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases.
- The initial collaboration will be for four years, with Celgene having the option to extend the research period by another two years. Celgene will have the right to opt into programs when an investigational new drug application is filed.
Dive Insight:
A tie-up with Vividion is the latest move by Celgene to fix what is broken. The company has had a slew of setbacks in its pipeline and is facing a patent expiration for its best-selling product, putting $8.1 billion in revenue at risk.
Most recently, Celgene announced a Refusal to File letter from the Food and Drug Administration for its blockbuster hopeful multiple sclerosis drug ozanimod.
The company's stock is currently trading around $88 per share, well off its 52-week high of $147 apiece. Investors have been hoping the company would come up with some solution for its long line of problems, but even recent acquisitions seem like a band-aid for a bullet hole.
Celgene shelled out $7 billion to acquire San Diego-based Impact Biomedicines and its late-stage blood disease drug fedratinib. The company followed up that buy with its $9 billion acquisition of CAR-T play Juno Therapeutics the last week in January.
The deal with Vividion will use the biotech's proteomics platform for develop compounds that can modulate certain protein levels for therapeutic benefit.
Should any compounds from the collaboration reach the market, Vividion will have the option to receive double-digit royalties on sales and milestone payments. The companies will also potentially split either U.S. or worldwide development costs and commercialization profits and losses for programs beyond the first compound.