Drug Delivery Report

During December 2006, PharmaDeals® Agreements recorded a total of 15 deals relating to drug delivery, nine fewer than the number recorded for the previous month. Despite the lower number of deals, a similar pattern to that seen in November was also seen in December. Global and established companies continued to be involved in a higher number of deals than they had been earlier in the year. Only three deals during December took place between start-up and emerging companies. By contrast, global companies were involved in six deals and established companies in five transactions. A result of this unusually high level of deal making activity by larger companies was that a number of deals had significantly high potential financial values. The majority of December's deals involved licensing agreements.

Oxford BioMedica, a gene therapy company based in the UK, signed two licensing agreements with multinational organisations. On 19 December, it expanded an existing licensing agreement with a major company, its name undisclosed (Deal no. 26081). Two days later, Oxford BioMedica and Sigma-Aldrich, an established life sciences and high technology company, signed a joint licensing agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) (Deal no. 26106). Both deals, the financial details of which are unknown, centred upon Oxford BioMedica's LentiVector® technology, which can deliver genes to a wide range of cell and tissue types.

GSK was involved in another drug delivery related-deal on 8 December, when it acquired emerging Domantis for £230 M (US$454 M) (Deal no. 25980). Based in the UK, Domantis will become part of GSK's Biopharmaceuticals Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery (CEDD), where it will continue its research into the next generation of antibody therapy. Its human antibody fragments, or domain antibodies (dAbs), my be administered in inhaled, topical and, potentially, oral formulations, as well as by injection and infusion.

The Roche Group was also involved in a couple of December's deals. On 20 December, Genentech (of Roche Holding) entered into a licensing and co-development agreement with Altus Pharmaceuticals for US$280 M (Deal no. 26091). This deal which is an exclusively North American arrangement, focuses upon Altus' product candidate ALTU-238, a subcutaneously administered once-weekly formulation of human growth hormone. On 5 December, Roche Group entered into a collaborative and licensing transaction with Halozyme Therapeutics, resulting in one of the highest value drug delivery deals of the year, at US$612 M (Deal no. 25967). At the heart of this deal is Halozyme's Enhanze™ Technology, based upon its recombinant human hyaluronidase (rHuPH20), which is an analogue of a human enzyme that temporarily clears space in the matrix of skin and other tissue, acting as a 'molecular machete'.

In other drug delivery deals, pSivida entered into a licensing agreement with an undisclosed global company for its technologies, such as the injectable device Medidur™ and a form of silicon known as BioSilicon™ (Deal no. 26124). On 15 December, in a deal worth up to US$75 M, global company Baxter International entered into a licensing agreement with Lipoxen for its Polyxen® protein drug delivery technology, which could be used to deliver blood-clotting factors, thus reducing the frequency of injections required by sufferers of haemophilia and other blood-clotting disorders (Deal no. 26061). Also of note during December was Vectura Group's US collaboration, worth up to US$63 M, and with an undisclosed established company, for Vectura's combination asthma therapy using its GyroHaler® (Deal no. 26186). In addition, on 21 December, Inyx Pharma entered into a strategic collaboration with fellow start-up BioProgress for BioProgress' TABWRAP™ technology, which delivers tablets or capsules in an ingestible or edible film sheet (Deal no. 26112).