December 16, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Editor
Addiction treatment biopharma Lightlake Therapeutics Inc. has entered into a license agreement with Adapt Pharma Operations Limited to develop and commercialize Lightlake‘s intranasal naloxone opioid overdose reversal treatment for $55 million, plus up to double-digit royalties, the company said Tuesday.
Adapt Pharma Operations is a wholly owned subsidiary of Irish company Adapt Pharma Limited and it clearly hopes to take the promising overdose reversal therapy into a sadly booming sector of the medical market—the increasing usage of opioids and the related over dosages that come with addiction.
So far, Lightlake has gained attention for its work with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, on a clinical trial in September 2013 that showed using naloxone can potentially be delivered into the blood stream “at least as quickly” as the injection process currently used by hospitals, first responders and others treating opioid overdoses.
“We are pleased to partner with Lightlake and add this product to our business,” said Seamus Mulligan, Adapt Pharma‘s chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement. “The product is an important therapeutic and will have significant benefits for patients, first responder medical staff and caregivers. We look forward to completing the late stage development and to commercially launching the product.”
Torreya Partners acted as financial advisor and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius acted as legal advisor to Lightlake on the transaction.
In 2013, drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last spring, and most of them were accidents involving addictive opioids that were prescribed.
“The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly,” said Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
The CDC reported there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide in 2010, with medication-related deaths accounting for 22,134 of those fatalities. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.
Opioid drugs including biopharma blockbuster OxyContin and Vicodin contributed to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths, said the CDC.
