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Shire acquires SARcode to aid in development of dry eye treatment
The new drug would address the signs and symptoms of the disease.
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Shire U.S. Holdings acquired SARcode Bioscience in a transaction that closed on April 17.
Shire, a global specialty biopharmaceutical company, will aid in the development and market preparation for SARcode’s lifitegrast ophthalmic solution, a small-molecule integrin antagonist for the treatment of dry eye.
“One of the important elements of why we decided to be acquired by Shire is because they’ve entered many new markets, and what they tend to do is hire the expertise of the companies that they’ve bought to ensure success,” Quinton C. Oswald, CEO of SARcode Bioscience, said in an interview with Ocular Surgery News.
Shire is making an initial payment of $160 million, and SARcode shareholders will be eligible for additional undisclosed payments related to clinical, regulatory and/or commercial milestones, according to a news release.
“We’re a venture-backed company, which is majority owned by venture capitalists, so the balance would be that each SARcode person that has stock will benefit from the return,” Oswald said. “The funding will be provided by Shire to continue to develop this drug and market it appropriately.”
SARcode’s institutional investors include Alta Partners, Clarus Venture Partners, Rho Ventures and Sofinnova Ventures.
The funding by Shire will help SARcode shepherd lifitegrast through approval and potentially launch, Oswald said.
“We’ve done all that we can,” Oswald said. “We’ve learned a lot from our clinical programs, and we’re further along than most companies in dry eye.”
The lifitegrast program comprises two phase 3 clinical studies, OPUS-1 and OPUS-2, as well as an ongoing safety study, SONATA. The results of these studies will be used for the basis of a new drug application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
SARcode is conducting the 700-patient OPUS-2 study to confirm results from OPUS-1, which demonstrated that dry eye patients treated with lifitegrast had improved scores in ocular dryness and corneal staining compared with those who received placebo.
SONATA is an ongoing, randomized, placebo-controlled, year-long clinical efficacy study.
Shire anticipates launching lifitegrast in the U.S. as early as 2016, pending the outcome of the clinical programs, according to a company press release. – by Cheryl DiPietro