Sobi has hit the acquisition trail with a deal to buy Arthrosi Therapeutics for up to $1.5 billion, adding a drug in late-stage clinical testing for gout.
The deal, which includes a sizeable $950 million in upfront cash and $550 million tied to potential clinical, regulatory, and sales milestones, revolves around once-daily URAT1 inhibitor pozdeutinurad (AR882).
San Diego-based Arthrosi completed enrolment in a pair of phase 3 trials of pozdeutinurad (REDUCE 1 and REDUCE 2) earlier this year, and has said it will report results next year, with marketing applications scheduled to follow thereafter.
If the deal goes through, the acquisition will strengthen Stockholm, Sweden-based Sobi’s gout franchise, which also includes NASP (nano-encapsulated sirolimus plus pegadricase; formerly SEL-212), partnered with Selecta Biosciences.
NASP was filed in the US as a treatment for patients with uncontrolled gout in September and is heading for an FDA decision in June.
“Pozdeutinurad has the potential to become the therapy of choice for patients who have progressive gout with persistent and unresolved symptoms despite first-line therapy,” said Guido Oelkers, president and chief executive of Sobi.
“The product has the potential to materially accelerate our growth until the mid 2030s, and beyond,” he added.
Targeting URAT1 is a tried-and-tested strategy to treat gout, an excruciatingly painful form of inflammatory arthritis caused by elevated levels of uric acid in the blood, resulting in crystals being deposited in and around joints. In the US, an estimated 13 million individuals are diagnosed with gout, with around 2 million of them having an advanced (tophaceous) form.
The decades-old gout drug probenecid works via the URAT1 mechanism, clearing excess uric acid from the blood, but it is only modestly effective and is generally only used if xanthine oxidase inhibitors like allopurinol have failed.
A couple of newer medicines in the URAT1 inhibitor class have reached the US market, including Ironwood Pharma’s more potent Zurampic (lesinurad) and Duzallo (lesinurad plus allopurinol), but failed to make commercial headway thanks to a complex regimen and concerns about kidney side effects, and were withdrawn from sale in 2019.
Other drugs coming through the URAT1 inhibitor pipeline include Atom Bioscience’s lingdolinurad (ABP-671), in phase 2b/3 testing, and dotinurad, which is already sold by originator Fuji Yakuhin in Japan under the Urece brand name and is in phase 3 testing in the US by licensee Crystalys Therapeutics.
Arthrosi raised $153 million in October for the pozdeutinurad programme in a Series E financing.
