Allergan Inc. of Irvine is adding to its drugs for treating urinary disorders.
Earlier this month, Allergan struck a deal with Milford, Pa.-based Serenity Pharmaceuticals LLC that could be worth up to $165 million.
Allergan is set to pay $43 million to Serenity for exclusive worldwide development, manufacturing and commercializing rights for Serenity’s Ser-120, which treats nocturia, or frequent urination at night.
The deal gives Allergan the rights to market Ser-120 for all potential uses with the exception of pediatric bedwetting.
Privately held Serenity also could receive development and milestone payments of up to $122 million from Allergan.
Nocturia often occurs in patients with other urinary system disorders such as an overactive bladder or a benign enlarged prostate gland.
If Ser-120 is successful, it would “complement our emerging urology portfolio,” said Scott Whitcup, Allergan’s chief scientific officer and executive vice president of research and development.
Urology drugs accounted for $65.6 million of Allergan’s $4.5 billion in sales last year. Sanctura XR for overactive bladder is Allergan’s lead urology drug.
Allergan has projected Sanctura will account for $90 million to $100 million of its expected $4.55 billion to $4.75 billion of product sales this year.
The drug maker began its urology chase about three years ago, when it bought New Jersey-based Esprit Pharma Inc. for $370 million. That deal brought Sanctura.
In 2008, Allergan hooked up with Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc., also in Irvine, to develop EoQuin, a drug candidate for treating bladder cancer.
Regulators said last year that they would speed up their review of EoQuin, which is intended to treat bladder cancer that hasn’t spread deep into a patient’s bladder muscle layer.
Besides making deals, Allergan also is looking at its wrinkle-removing flagship drug Botox as another potential treatment for overactive bladder.
‘Doughnut Hole’ Closure
Drug makers, including Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is just over the county line in Corona, should benefit from the filling of the Medicare prescription “doughnut hole,” according to an article on investor Web site Street.com.
In healthcare reform enacted last month, drug makers beat back deeper price cuts and direct government negotiations for prices in exchange for discounts for Medicare drug benefit recipients who fall under a coverage gap known as the doughnut hole.
The hole occurs when a Medicare beneficiary has reached his or her annual coverage limit but hasn’t spent enough money on drugs to qualify for catastrophic coverage.
Kevin Baker, author of the Street.com article, said that while companies such as Watson could have done poorly if the Obama administration had pushed through Medicare drug-price negotiations, “The threat of pharmaceutical industry power to prevent comprehensive healthcare reform caused the president to sidestep potential adverse impacts on these companies, making them winners instead of losers.”
Baker has a “buy” rating on Watson and a pair of Big Pharma players: Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co.
In other Watson news, the drug maker said its Florida subsidiary received Food and Drug Administration approval for diltiazem hydrochloride extended-release tablets, the generic equivalent of Cardizem LA, a blood pressure drug made by Canada’s Biovail Corp.
Watson said it immediately started selling the drug upon approval.
Watson’s founder, Allen Chao, lives in Anaheim Hills. He and his family are major OC philanthropic players—the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Irvine, bears their name.
Hycor Gets New Boss
Garden Grove-based Hycor Biomedical Inc. named Dick Aderman as its new chief executive and president.
Hycor makes and sells diagnostic tests for allergies, autoimmune diseases and urinalysis used in clinical laboratories.
Aderman’s background includes serving as a senior vice president with Roche Diagnostics Corp., a unit of Switzerland’s Roche Holding AG. He also is a former vice president of marketing at Boehringer Mannheim Corp. and Dade International.
Hycor once was among the county’s smaller publicly traded companies. In 2004, it was sold to Stratagene Corp. of La Jolla. Agilent Technologies Inc., a Santa Clara-based maker of scientific and technical instruments, bought Stratagene in 2007.
In February, Agilent sold Hycor to Linden LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm, for an undisclosed price.
At the time of the sale, an Agilent official said Hycor was an “innovative, profitable and growing business, but it does not fit the core focus of our life science business.”
Bits and Pieces:
Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills is the only Orange County facility to make Thomson Reuters’ 100 Top Hospitals list published earlier this month in Modern Healthcare magazine … UCI Medical Center, an Orange teaching hospital, said its heart failure and stroke programs were recertified by the Joint Commission, a standards-setting and accrediting organization … Healthcare Data Solutions, a Foothill Ranch-based compiler of doctor, pharmacy, dentist, nurse and hospital databases, said it opened a division that will use analytics to help uncover hidden customer information for its clients.
