Clinical Data acquires Adenosine Therapeutics

In exchange for all of the company’s operating assets, Clinical Data paid $11 million in cash, and entered into a $22 million, five-year promissory note and a separate $3.2 million, 32-month promissory note. Contingent consideration of up to $30 million in cash may be paid on achievement of certain regulatory and commercial milestones.

The acquisition of Adenosine Therapeutics is said to expand Clinical Data’s PGxHealth division’s pipeline of therapeutics, adding drug candidates in cardiology, diabetes, inflammatory diseases, and sickle cell anemia.

The acquisition further enhances PGxHealth’s pipeline with Stedivaze (apadenoson), which is expected to enter Phase III testing in 2009 as a pharmacologic stress agent for myocardial perfusion imaging.

Two compounds in the Adenosine Therapeutics pipeline are the subject of licensing option agreements. Novartis holds an option to partner on the development of ATL844, in preclinical study for the treatment of diabetes and asthma, and a confidential partner holds an option on another compound in preclinical development for an ophthalmic indication.

Drew Fromkin, president and CEO of Clinical Data, said: “We believe that combining our pharmacogenomic expertise with Adenosine Therapeutics’s broad estate of highly selective adenosine receptor agonists and antagonists could produce targeted therapeutics and companion biomarker tests across a number of therapeutic areas, with a development path made more efficient with the incorporation of biomarkers.”