Under the terms of the agreement, Auxilium will receive exclusive, worldwide, royalty-bearing rights to develop, manufacture and market eight analgesic compounds using PharmaForm’s proprietary, transmucosal delivery system. The compounds to be developed include opioids as well as other types of analgesics.
This agreement represents an expansion to Auxilium’s core therapeutic areas of urologic and sexual health; a development the company believes will be complementary according to Gerri Henwood, chairman and CEO of Auxilium: “Pain is a symptom frequently encountered in the practice of urology. Because a frequent co-morbidity of chronic pain treated with opiates is hypogonadism, we believe there is a substantial population of pain specialists among the physicians that our pharmaceutical sales professionals visit regularly to provide information on Testim, our 1% testosterone gel product.”
The transmucosal system is expected to reduce side-effects and optimize dosing, thus proving potentially more economical. Auxilium anticipates moving forward with dose form development this year.
Auxilium is currently developing two product candidates using transmucosal technology: a male hormone replacement therapy and a therapy to treat overactive bladder.