May 11, 2015
By
Alex Keown
, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
SUMMIT, N.J. --
Robert J. Hugin
, chief executive officer of
Celgene Corporation
told
Bloomberg News
licensing deals with other pharmaceutical companies are paying off with eight new compounds the company plans to put into human testing over the next year-and-a-half.
Hugin told
Bloomberg
the deal making strategy his company has become known for, is paying off.
“We think
the strategy
is working very well. There’s great productivity coming out of the partnerships,” Hugin said to
Bloomberg
.
In 2014
Celgene
entered into 10 deals with other companies, shelling out an average of $222 million in upfront payments to its partners.
Celgene
’s 2014 deal making was the most of any other biotech firm,
Bloomberg
said. However,
Celgene
has been striking profitable partnerships for years.
Acceleron
In 2008
Celgene
entered into a $2 billion deal with
Acceleron Pharma
to develop and market
Acceleron
‘s lead bone-forming protein,
Sotatercept
, formerly known as ACE-011. Sotatercept is an investigational protein therapeutic that increases red blood cell levels by targeting molecules in the TGF-ß superfamily for the treatment of anemia in rare blood diseases. The two companies are also collaborating on ACE-536, another blood treatment that targets sickle cell anemia. The drug is currently in late-stage trials.
Agios
In April
Celgene
entered into an $80 million agreement with
Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
to develop AG-881, a small molecule that has shown in preclinical studies to fully penetrate the blood brain barrier and inhibit isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) and IDH2 mutant cancer models. The companies said they plan to initiate clinical development of AG-881 in the second quarter of 2015. That will make the third mutant inhibitor discovered by
Agios
to enter into clinical development. The two companies entered into a similar agreement in 2010 to develop
Agios
’ other mutant inhibitor AG-221 and AG-120. Under that deal
Agios
is eligible for up to $240 million in milestone payments.
Northern Biologics
In addition to the
Agios
deal,
Celgene
also announced in April that it struck a $30 million agreement with one-year-old Canada-based
Northern Biologics
to advance that company’s work in oncology and fibrosis therapeutics.
AstraZeneca PLC
Also in April
Celgene
entered into a
collaborative agreement
with
AstraZeneca
that will allow the U.S.-based drug firm to develop MEDI4736,
AstraZeneca
’s immunotherapy treatment for blood cancer. Under the deal,
Celgene
will be responsible for selling MEDI4736 in blood cancers and will pay
AstraZeneca
an initial royalty of 70 percent, which will decrease to approximately half of sales over a period of four years.
Nogra Pharma
Other noted deals include
Celgene
’s Crohn’s Disease drug GED-0301 (mongersen), licensed from
Nogra Pharma
for $710 million with a promise of nearly $2 billion more in milestone payments.
Celgene
plans to move GED-0301 to Phase III trial.
Quanticel Pharmaceuticals
Another April deal was the
$485 million transaction
to acquire cancer drugmaking company
Quanticel Pharmaceuticals
, following a partnership established in 2011. That alliance allowed
Quanticel
to develop its single-cell platform for analysis of tumor cellular content and apply the platform to target discovery and the development of high-quality drug candidates.
Others
Celgene
also has additional research and development deals with
NantBioscience
,
Nogra
,
OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
,
PharmAkea Therapeutics
,
Presage
,
Quanticel, Pharmaceuticals
,
Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute
,
Sanofi
,
Sutro Biopharma
,
Tengion Inc.
,
Triphase
,
Vaxon Biotech
and
VentiRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Celgene
’s deal making strategy has been pleasing to shareholders, with stock up nearly 60 percent since last year.
Celgene
’s stock had a morning high of $114.44 this morning, up from its open of $113.83.
Celgene
is valued at $97 billion and currently has seven approved drugs on the market, including the company’s top cancer drug, Revlimid, which brought in $4.98 billion last year.
The base for Revlimid is thalidomide, a drug that garnered a bad reputation in the 1960s for causing birth defects.
Celgene
acquired the patent for thalidomide in 1992 and has transformed the drug’s reputation by adapting it for use as a therapy for the blood cancer multiple myeloma.
In addition to Revlimid,
Celgene
also markets oncology drug Abraxane, which had firs quarter sales of $223 million. The company is seeking to market Abraxane in China as a treatment for pancreatic cancer. The drug has been approved to treat pancreatic cancer in other countries, but not China,
Bloomberg
reported.