Forest Labs forges $75M deal for anti-depressant

Forest Laboratories has inked a deal to buy the North American rights to Pierre Fabre Medicament's experimental anti-depressant F2695 for $75 million. An undisclosed set of milestone payments are also on the table, along with future royalties.

F2695 posted positive mid-stage data for depression and is slated to start a late-stage trial next year. Forest will take over clinical development and commercialization efforts in the U.S. and Canada. F2695 is similar to milnacipran, which Forest has been developing with Pierre and Cypress Bioscience as a treatment for fibromyalgia. The FDA is reviewing the application for that drug.

"Pierre Fabre has been an outstanding partner for Forest since we commenced our alliance in 2004," commented Howard Solomon, chairman and CEO of Forest. "We are highly encouraged by the strong clinical antidepressant activity and good tolerability exhibited by F2695 in the recently completed placebo-controlled, double-blind Phase II study. We look forward to initiating Phase III studies with F2695 next year. F2695 is the second late-stage product candidate we have licensed this quarter, underscoring our commitment to further building our pipeline and bringing novel therapeutics to the market."

- check out the press release

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