Antisoma raises $65M through drug sale to Sanofi

U.K.-based Antisoma has raised $65 million through the sell of U.S. rights to Oforta (oral fludarabine), an FDA-approved treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, to Sanofi-Aventis. The company will get an immediate cash payment of $60 million and another $5 million in future payments, which will be used to further develop its pipeline. Antisoma has licensed the drug from Bayer Schering since purchasing Boston-based Xanthus Pharmaceutical a year ago. Under the deal, Sanofi will now acquire those agreements.

"The sale of oral fludarabine roughly doubles our cash resources, and will enable us to pursue all our priority programmes until at least mid-2011, which is well beyond when we expect key phase III results for our leading products, ASA404 and AS1413," said CEO Glyn Edwards.

ASA404, the drug developer's lead program, is a vascular disruptive agent currently in two phase III studies for cancer. The drug candidate is out-licensed to Novartis, which is absorbing all development and marketing costs. That frees up the new cash injection for the company's other products, Antisoma spokesperson Chris Elston tells FierceBiotech. The priority for the new funds will be AS1413, which is in an ongoing phase III study for blood cancer. Antisoma expects the results from this trial in 2010. Also in the pipeline is AS1411, which is in a Phase II trial for acute myeloid leukemia and renal cell carcinoma, and AS1402, a drug candidate currently in Phase II trials for breast cancer.

According to Elston, Antisoma wants to become a company that markets it own drugs. As the drug expected to be ready for the market by 2011, AS1413 will be the first drug the company will market solo. And Elston tells us that with Novartis planning to bring ASA404 to the market by 2011 as well, Antisoma will have a U.S. sales force in a few years one way or another.

- check out the Antisoma release
- here's Sanofi's release