October 14, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Beleaguered German biotech Wilex AG will sell the rights to an undisclosed cancer drug to Swiss drugmaker Roche for as much as $65.8 million, the company said Tuesday.
Wilex desperately needs the money to stay afloat after a year that has seen it rocked by a failed drug trial and a wholesale auctioning of its assets to foreign partners. It slashed 80 percent of its workforce in January and had its CEO step down shortly thereafter.
It is now attempting to exit the development business, a process that makes today’s news all the more relevant.
Under the terms of the deal, Roche will receive exclusive rights to the unnamed cancer target and will expand its relationship with Wilex subsidiary Heidelberg Pharma. Heidelberg currently handles the out-licensing for Wilex’s proprietary anti-body drug conjugate therapies.
“This extension provides a number of interesting opportunities,” said Jan Schmidt-Brand, managing director of Heidelberg Pharma GmbH andCEO/CFO of WILEX AG, in a statement. “We are pleased to extend our collaboration to include additional Roche targets and the in-house target that WILEX had previously reserved for later development.”
Wilex has already made several global deals of this type this year, including selling the Chinese rights to its Phase II pancreatic and breast cancer treatment Mesupron to Link Health for $9.6 million. That partnership gave the remaining slice of ownership of the drug to Israeli biotech RedHill Biopharma for future royalties and $1 million.
That’s all part of a strategy to recover from a disastrous two years of scrambling for investors following the failed Phase III trial of Rencarex, a renal cell carcinoma treatment.
“As with many of these early research collaborations, our operating costs are covered by upfront payments and fees; the full value will potentially come later in the development cycle,” said Schmidt-Brand.
