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news.US-based Ligand Pharmaceuticals has entered into a licensing agreement and research collaboration with AstraZeneca's subsidiary Omthera Pharmaceuticals to develop products for the treatment of dyslipidemia, including hypertriglyceridemia.
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The research deal will target the development of new products that use the proprietary Ligand-developed LTP TECHNOLOGY to improve lipid-lowering activity of certain omega-3 fatty acids.
Ligand president and chief executive officer John Higgins said the proprietary LTP TECHNOLOGY and the company’s knowledge in molecule discovery, design and targeting combine very well with Omthera’s expertise in the clinical development of new therapies for lipid disorders.
"With Omthera, we are partnering with an organization that is highly capable of developing and commercializing drug products with our LTP TECHNOLOGY to reach the estimated hundreds of millions people world-wide suffering from dyslipidemia-related diseases," Higgins said.
As part of the deal, Ligand will be eligible to receive payments of about $44.5m upon the achievement of specific milestones, as well as tiered royalties ranging from mid to high single digits of net sales.
The deal will see Omthera solely responsible for all research and clinical development costs as well as commercialization of any products derived from the new deal.
The LTP TECHNOLOGY is a new prodrug technology platform designed to selectively deliver a range of active pharmaceutical agents to the liver.
The technology works by chemically modifying a biologically active molecule into an inactive prodrug form that will be administered and later activated in the liver by certain enzymes mainly expressed in the liver.
It can be used to improve activity and/or safety of an existing drug or to develop new agents for the treatment of liver diseases or diseases caused by homeostasis imbalance of circulating biomolecules controlled by the liver such as lipids and glucose, and is especially applicable to metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.