Lundbeck Snaps Up Parkinson's Developer Prexton In Deal Worth €905m
Executive Summary
Lundbeck has swooped in to buy Merck KGaA spinout Prexton Therapeutics for €100m upfront, prior to Phase II data readouts for its potential first-in-class Parkinson's drug, foliglurax.
Lundbeck Inc. has acquired Dutch biopharma company Prexton Therapeutics for €100m upfront, with milestone payment agreements expected to reach €805m, for the smaller firm's Phase II Parkinson's drug foliglurax.
Through Prexton, Lundbeck will obtain global rights to foliglurax, which currently is in clinical Phase II testing for symptomatic treatment of OFF-time reduction in Parkinson’s disease and dyskinesia (uncontrolled movements) including levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID). First data from the ongoing clinical Phase II program are expected to readout in mid-2019.
Lundbeck will pay €100m upfront to the current investors of Prexton, followed by up to €805m in development, regulatory and sales milestones depending on the successful outcome of certain undisclosed achievements.
Prexton, based in Oss in the Netherlands, and Geneva, Switzerland, was founded in 2012 by François Conquet and M-Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Merck KGAA. Other major investors include Forbion, Seroba Life Sciences, Sunstone Capital and Ysios Capital. (Also see "Merck Spin-Off Prexton Turns mGluR4 Fortunes Around In Parkinson's Disease" - Scrip, 7 Feb, 2017.)
The emerging company raised €29m via a series B financing in early 2017 to progress foliglurax, a metabotropic glutamate receptor 4 (mGluR4) positive allosteric modulator (PAM), into Phase II trials.
Conquet, who is CEO of the company, told Scrip in Spring 2017 that the company had hoped to license the drug to a big pharma eventually. He said at the time that the company had seen a lot of interest from potential partners.
"We are very excited to be working with Lundbeck, a company with a strong history and focus on diseases of the central nervous system," said Conquet in a March 16 statement. He added that Lundbeck shared Prexton's vision for the drug and its development path in Parkinson's disease.
Foliglurax's Development
Parkinson's disease is caused by the degeneration of dopaminergic brain cells and most current treatments aim to replace dopamine or mimic its effects. Prexton's approach, however, is to stimulate a separate, compensatory neuronal system unaffected by Parkinson's.
Foliglurax is currently being tested in the Phase II AMBLED trial in Europe, from which topline data are expected in mid-2019. This is the only product in Prexton's pipeline.
Prexton had also planned to launch a Phase II study in the US for foliglurax in Parkinson's, known as the ATTUNED trial. This study has not yet begun to enroll patients.
In Phase I, the company reported that foliglurax was safe and well tolerated at doses well above those that produce robust effects in Parkinson's disease animal models.
Prexton's mGluR4 drug is the only pharma-sponsored program in clinical development; there is one investigator-initiated study ongoing for an mGluR4 therapy, being led by the Polish Academy of Sciences, however this is in schizophrenia.
Elsewhere, Addex Therapeutics has a preclinical mGluR4 asset, which it is testing in multiple sclerosis and substance use disorder.
Lundbeck's Rationale
Datamonitor Healthcare forecasts that the $3.2bn Parkinson’s disease market will grow to $6.0bn by 2025. However, much of this growth will be driven by the largely generic US market.
Still, there is an appetite for new pipeline therapies for the treatment of late-stage disease, specifically those targeting patients with inadequate symptomatic control through each day and/or levodopa-induced dyskinesia.
Many of the pipeline therapies in development for Parkinson's disease are either older reformulations (e.g. apomorphine), or tweaks on how to deliver a higher dose of levodopa therapy more consistently. As a new chemical entity, foliglurax may be able to differentiate clinically from these old drugs and therefore have a larger commercial potential.
But it also has a higher likelihood of not reaching the market, as drugs hitting other new targets in Parkinson's have historically struggled to demonstrate adequate clinical profiles, for example adenosine A2a receptor antagonists such as Acorda Therapeutics Inc.'s tozadenant.
As such, foliglurax represents a high-risk but high-reward opportunity for Lundbeck, a CNS focused company which has historical involvement with the development of Parkinson’s disease drugs.