May 11, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
SUMMIT, N.J. -- Robert J. Hugin, chief executive officer of Celgene Corporation told Bloomberg News licensing deals with other pharmaceutical companies are paying off with eight new compounds the company plans to put into human testing over the next year-and-a-half.
Hugin told Bloomberg the deal making strategy his company has become known for, is paying off.
“We think the strategy is working very well. There’s great productivity coming out of the partnerships,” Hugin said to Bloomberg.
In 2014 Celgene entered into 10 deals with other companies, shelling out an average of $222 million in upfront payments to its partners. Celgene’s 2014 deal making was the most of any other biotech firm, Bloomberg said. However, Celgene has been striking profitable partnerships for years.
Acceleron
In 2008 Celgene entered into a $2 billion deal with Acceleron Pharma to develop and market Acceleron‘s lead bone-forming protein, Sotatercept, formerly known as ACE-011. Sotatercept is an investigational protein therapeutic that increases red blood cell levels by targeting molecules in the TGF-ß superfamily for the treatment of anemia in rare blood diseases. The two companies are also collaborating on ACE-536, another blood treatment that targets sickle cell anemia. The drug is currently in late-stage trials.
Agios
In April Celgene entered into an $80 million agreement with Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop AG-881, a small molecule that has shown in preclinical studies to fully penetrate the blood brain barrier and inhibit isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) and IDH2 mutant cancer models. The companies said they plan to initiate clinical development of AG-881 in the second quarter of 2015. That will make the third mutant inhibitor discovered by Agios to enter into clinical development. The two companies entered into a similar agreement in 2010 to develop Agios’ other mutant inhibitor AG-221 and AG-120. Under that deal Agios is eligible for up to $240 million in milestone payments.
In addition to the Agios deal, Celgene also announced in April that it struck a $30 million agreement with one-year-old Canada-based Northern Biologics to advance that company’s work in oncology and fibrosis therapeutics.
Also in April Celgene entered into a collaborative agreement with AstraZeneca that will allow the U.S.-based drug firm to develop MEDI4736, AstraZeneca’s immunotherapy treatment for blood cancer. Under the deal, Celgene will be responsible for selling MEDI4736 in blood cancers and will pay AstraZeneca an initial royalty of 70 percent, which will decrease to approximately half of sales over a period of four years.
Nogra Pharma
Other noted deals include Celgene’s Crohn’s Disease drug GED-0301 (mongersen), licensed from Nogra Pharma for $710 million with a promise of nearly $2 billion more in milestone payments. Celgene plans to move GED-0301 to Phase III trial.
Another April deal was the $485 million transaction to acquire cancer drugmaking company Quanticel Pharmaceuticals, following a partnership established in 2011. That alliance allowed Quanticel to develop its single-cell platform for analysis of tumor cellular content and apply the platform to target discovery and the development of high-quality drug candidates.
Others
Celgene also has additional research and development deals with NantBioscience, Nogra, OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , PharmAkea Therapeutics, Presage, Quanticel, Pharmaceuticals, Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute, Sanofi , Sutro Biopharma, Tengion Inc., Triphase, Vaxon Biotech and VentiRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Celgene’s deal making strategy has been pleasing to shareholders, with stock up nearly 60 percent since last year. Celgene’s stock had a morning high of $114.44 this morning, up from its open of $113.83.
Celgene is valued at $97 billion and currently has seven approved drugs on the market, including the company’s top cancer drug, Revlimid, which brought in $4.98 billion last year.
The base for Revlimid is thalidomide, a drug that garnered a bad reputation in the 1960s for causing birth defects. Celgene acquired the patent for thalidomide in 1992 and has transformed the drug’s reputation by adapting it for use as a therapy for the blood cancer multiple myeloma.
In addition to Revlimid, Celgene also markets oncology drug Abraxane, which had firs quarter sales of $223 million. The company is seeking to market Abraxane in China as a treatment for pancreatic cancer. The drug has been approved to treat pancreatic cancer in other countries, but not China, Bloomberg reported.
