January 16, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Basel, Switzerland-based Roche announced today that is acquiring Marseille, France-based Trophos for $540 million. There will be an upfront cash payment of 120 million euros and additional contingent payments up to 350 million euros based on milestones.
Founded in 1999, Trophos is a privately-held clinical stage pharmaceutical company. Its platform is based on cholesterol-oxime based chemistries and develops mitochondrial targeted compounds. The research is linked to cell death or survival. The company’s olesoxime (TRO19622) is under development for the treatment of SMA, a rare genetic neuromuscular disease most common in children.
“SMA is a grievous disease with a huge impact on the daily life of patients and their families, who are currently left only with supportive care,” said Christine Placet, chief executive of Trophos in a statement. “We are proud to see the development of this medicine evolving, with the ultimate goal of a potential first medicine for SMA. This is a tremendous recognition of the work done by Trophos’s teams and supporters over the past 16 years.”
This marks yet another deal by Roche. Earlier this week the company announced a $750 million deal with Japan’s Meiji Seika Pharma and Canada’s Fedora Pharmaceuticals for a beta-lactamase inhibitor OP0595 for antibiotic resistant bacteria.
On Jan. 12 Roche entered into a strategic collaboration with Cambridge, Mass.-based Foundation Medicine, Inc. In that deal Roche will fund Foundation’s research and development for more than $150 million for a minimum of five years. That deal totals about $1.03 billion and gives Roche a 56.3 percent stake in Foundation.
“This acquisition highlights Roche’s commitment to developing medicines for spinal muscular atrophy, a serious disease with no effective treatment,” said CMO and Head of Roche Global Product Development Sandra Horning in a statement. “We will build on the work done by Trophos and the French Muscular Dystrophy Association to advance the development of olesoxime and to bring it to people who live with this devastating condition as quickly as possible.”
Olesoxime is designed to protect motor nerve cells. The compound has been granted Orphan Medicinal Product designation for the treatment of SMA by the European Medicines Agency and orphan drug designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug has shown beneficial effect in maintaining neuromuscular function in patients with Type II and non-ambulatory Type III SMA, as well as cutting medical complications.
SMA is a rare disease affecting one in 6,000 to 10,000 children. An autosomal recessive genetic disease, a loss of function of the Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) 1 gene is the cause of the loss of function. This decrease in levels of the SMN protein causes progressive deterioration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and loss of motor neurons.
