7th Jun 2016 14:02
LONDON (Alliance News) - Skyepharma PLC on Tuesday said its oral business has signed an exclusive feasibility, development and licence agreement with Lucideon Limited, part of Lucideon Group Ltd, giving Skyepharma access to Lucideon's iCRT-deter abuse deterrent controlled release technology.
In a statement, Skyepharma said it initially intends to use the technology to develop an abuse deterrent formulation of a major opioid for the US market
According to GBI Research, Skyepharma said, the market is set to grow to USD17.7 billion by 2021 from USD11 billion in 2014.
Lucideon is eligible for appropriate milestone payments as the development progresses as well as a single digit share of Skyepharma's royalty revenues from in-market sales of the product. Assuming a successful development, the investment by Skyepharma is expected to be circa GBP4 million over four years.
Lucideon Chief Executive Tony Kinsella said: "If the feasibility study is successful, this could provide additional development and clinical trial supply work for the Lyon Facility where the manufacturing business is due to return to Skyepharma on expiry of the lease to Aenova on 30 June 2016. The route to market is also highly innovative - the generic (ANDA) route to filing provides a relatively rapid potential for approval, whilst opening up further opportunities should regulators seek to require greater abuse deterrence in marketed opioids," Peter Grant, chief executive officer of Skyepharma, said in a statement.
"We are pleased that our technology will be combined with Skyepharma's pharmaceutical development expertise to extend our reach further into the healthcare sector. We hope to have further opportunities to collaborate with Skyepharma using our iCRT family of technologies. This contract demonstrates the strength of our growing platform technology portfolio, particularly, but not exclusively, in healthcare markets."
Shares in Skyepharma were up 0.3% at 450.00 pence Tuesday.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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