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 The spin-off of the three clinical and three pre-clinical biological
compounds, announced on Wednesday, is the latest example of the
British drugmaker pruning its non-core drug development work to
focus on priority areas, notably in cancer.
Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said earlier this month that
AstraZeneca had a drug pipeline that was "over-sized relative to the
current size of our company".
It has already divested a number of medicines in recent years. In
2017, so-called externalization deals, involving asset sales and
partnerships, contributed $2.3 billion out of total revenue of $22.5
billion, prompting criticism from some analysts who argue such
transactions unduly flatter results.
In the case of the new inflammation and autoimmunity company, called
Viela Bio, AstraZeneca will retain a significant interest as the new
company's largest minority shareholder.
Viela Bio's potential new medicines include inebilizumab for
neuromyelitis optica, a rare disease affecting the optic nerve and
spinal cord of around five in 100,000 people. The drug has orphan
drug status and could be filed for approval in late 2019 or early
2020.
However, the deal does not include anifrolumab, a promising
treatment in final-stage clinical testing that AstraZeneca is
developing for lupus, an chronic autoimmune disease with limited
treatment options.
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Bahija Jallal, head of AstraZeneca's MedImmune biotech unit, said
the drugmaker would remain strongly active in immunology. "Our
strategy is very much to follow the science. In some cases, we will
develop the science in-house and in other cases it will be developed
elsewhere," she said in a phone interview.
Viela Bio will be based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and will be
funded with $250 million from a consortium of investors led by Boyu
Capital, 6 Dimensions Capital and Hillhouse Capital.
The new company's chief executive is Bing Yao, currently head of
respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity at AstraZeneca's
MedImmune innovative medicines unit. Several other MedImmune staff
will also move across to the new business, including Jorn Drappa,
who will head up research.
It is not the first time AstraZeneca has shifted assets into a new
biotech company in this way. In 2015, it spun out its early
small-molecule anti-infective drugs into Entasis Therapeutics and in
2008 it shifted gastrointestinal research into a company called
Albireo.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Larry King)
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