Acadia Pharmaceuticals will pocket $30 million upfront and stands to earn another $365 million in milestones from Biovail as they pursue an approval for a late-stage drug designed to treat Parkinson's disease psychosis. The pact covers the co-development and commercialization of pimavanserin, which is in a Phase III trial.
Biovail gains the right to develop and commercialize the drug--a 5-HT2A inverse agonist--in the U.S. and Canada while San Diego-based Acadia retains rights outside those two countries. Biovail will be responsible for all future costs associated with the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of pimavanserin in all indications with the exception of specified ongoing PDP studies, which Acadia will fund.
"Our alliance with Biovail not only helps us to advance pimavanserin as a potential first-in-class therapy for Parkinson's disease psychosis, but also enables us to broaden the pimavanserin development program to Alzheimer's disease psychosis," said Uli Hacksell, Ph.D., the CEO of Acadia.
Acadia plans to partner pimavanserin outside the U.S., Hacksell tells FierceBiotech, but not right away. The deal with Biovail allows Acadia to "take the program and enhance it even more before we partner in the rest of the world." The Phase III trial, he adds, is on track to deliver data in the third quarter of this year with the second efficacy trial wrapping up a year later.
"This agreement provides Biovail with a late-stage NCE product with strong intellectual property protection that is directly on target with our specialty central nervous system focus," noted Bill Wells, Biovail's CEO.
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