Pfizer Buys Your Biosimilar Partner? How Pfenex' Heartburn Was Quickly Relieved
By: Sue Sutter
In early February, biosimilar developer Pfenex Inc. was on the verge of a transformative deal with Hospira Inc. to bring a proposed biosimilar of Genentech Inc.'s ocular VEGF-inhibitor Lucentis (ranibizumab) to market.
Then it got some news that caused a bit of gastroesophageal reflux: Pfizer Inc. was acquiring Hospira for $17 billion.
"We were unaware of the Pfizer transaction" during negotiations with Hospira "so certainly that created a little bit of heartburn," Pfenex Chief Business Officer Patrick Lucy said during a June 16 interview with "The Pink Sheet" DAILY at the BIO annual convention in Philadelphia.
However, executives at the San Diego-based firm, which started life as a spinout from Dow Chemical Co., were quickly assuaged.
Hospira Chief Scientific Officer Sumant Ramachandra reached out to Pfenex executives "literally minutes after the press release hit the wire" to assure them the biosimilar deal would happen, Lucy said.
Pfizer's familiarity with Pfenex and its unique protein production platform also may have helped calm some nerves at the smaller company.
"We are not an unknown quantity to Pfizer," Lucy said. "Pfenex has had a lot of interactions with Pfizer in the past on this platform. The team at Pfizer that focuses on microbial expressed proteins has a long history of working with Pfenex and Pfenex technology. And certainly Pfizer's been supportive of biosimilars [with] significant efforts there. So I think there's a nice match in terms of history and commitment to biosimilars."
Five days after the Pfizer/Hospira deal was announced, Hospira and Pfenex announced their own development and commercialization partnership for PF582, Pfenex's proposed biosimilar to Lucentis.
Under the terms of the deal, Pfenex received an up-front payment of $51 million and is eligible for development and sales-based milestones of up to an additional $291 million, as well as a tiered double-digit royalty on net product sales.
The compound is currently in Phase I/II testing but is expected to enter Phase III in 2016. Pfenex and Hospira will share the Phase III equivalence trial costs, and Hospira will be responsible for manufacturing and commercializing the product worldwide.
But, if all goes as planned, Pfenex will soon be working with a partner that shares the first two letters of its name.
Sue Sutter is with The Pink Sheet. “The Pink Sheet” provides expert, in-depth analysis of biopharma regulatory, legislative, legal and business developments. Find out more at www.ThePinkSheet.com.