Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) has canceled a licensing agreement it signed in late 2015 with British company Heptares. Under the agreement, Teva received exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and market a small molecule gene-related peptide CGRP antagonist, which was discovered by Heptares for the treatment of migraine.
Heptares is a subsidiary of Japan's Sosei Group, traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company announced today that it had regained the worldwide rights from Teva to develop and commercialize HTL0022562’s entry into Phase 1 clinical trials, which was meant to be conducted by the end of 2018
Teva, under its new CEO Kare Schultz, is implementing a wide-ranging streamlining plan in order to reduce its debt, which stood at $32.5 billion at the end of 2017. In addition to 14,000 layoffs worldwide and plant closures, Teva is also trimming its drug development pipeline and development portfolio in both generic and branded drugs. This is the reason that the rights to HTL0022562 have been returned to Heptares.
Under the terms of the commercialization agreement that Teva signed in 2015, Heptares was paid $10 million upfront while milestone payments could have reached $400 million after successful R&D and marketing.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 13, 2018
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