January 13, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Biotech division will pay as much as $241 million to Vedanta Biosciences to take over the development a promising bacterial treatment as the company becomes the latest Big Pharma name to push into the microbiome therapy space.
Janssen said Tuesday that it will pay Boston, Mass.-based Vendanta for the right to develop its proprietary mix of bacteria from the Clostridia subspecies, dubbed VE-202, a therapy it is betting could one day be a blockbuster treatment for gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
“For us at Janssen, the human microbiome is a strategic area of research and development and we have formed a number of exciting biotech and academic collaborations in this promising scientific space,” said Sue Dillon, global therapeutic area head of tmmunology for Janssen Research & Development, in a statement. “Today, we are excited to license a potential microbiome pharmaceutical candidate for inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.”
VE-202 has shown some promise in helping the patient’s GI tracts replenish their bacterial levels to a healthy benchmark, so they can use their own immune systems to fight off the excruciating symptoms associated with Crohn’s and IBS.
Local venture capital shop PureTech Ventures has been backing Vedanta as its experiments have isolated 17 separate kinds of “friendly” Clostridia bacteria. That existing pipeline is very exciting to large companies looking for a quick, simple solution to GI problems that are easy on a patient’s body.
“Janssen is a leader in the field of inflammatory bowel disease,” said Michael Elliott, vice president of immunology scientific innovation at Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Boston. “Janssen pioneered the use of anti-TNF antibodies in IBD, and has other medicines in development in this disease area. The new program from Vedanta will complement these efforts, with potential to further improve disease control and treatment for patients in the future.”
Today’s licensing agreement with Vedanta Biosciences follows a June 2013 initial investment by Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Vedanta’s lead therapeutic candidate in IBD.
“We are excited by the rapid progress of our collaboration with Vedanta,” said Robert Urban, head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Boston. “Johnson & Johnson Innovation is solely focused on novel and highly impactful approaches to help patients. Today’s announcement follows our initial investment and represents Janssen’s first in-licensing of a potential first-in-class microbiome therapeutic; a significant milestone that may lead to exciting new treatment options for people living with IBD.”
