Biolex acquires full commercial rights to hepatitis drug

Under the agreement, Biolex will take full responsibility for development and commercialization of Locteron. OctoPlus will retain a royalty interest in the product candidate and provide manufacturing and process development services to Biolex.

The agreement calls for an up-front fee of $11 million to OctoPlus and Biolex will pay up to $138 million in additional development and sales milestones based on the progression of the product candidate through development and commercialization. Prior to entering into this agreement Biolex and OctoPlus shared the commercial rights to Locteron under a collaboration entered into in 2005.

Locteron is a controlled-release interferon alfa designed to improve patient care in the treatment of hepatitis C through a more favorable side-effect profile and dosing convenience compared to existing pegylated interferon products, said Biolex.

Locteron combines BLX-883, a recombinant interferon alfa produced by Biolex in its patented Lex System with PolyActive, an advanced controlled-release drug delivery technology developed by OctoPlus. Locteron is configured to allow dosing once-every-two-weeks, an improvement in patient convenience compared to currently marketed pegylated interferon alfa products that require dosing every week, according to Biolex. Locteron is currently in Phase II clinical testing.

Jan Turek, Biolex’s CEO, said: “Biolex and OctoPlus have worked well on this program during the early stages of product development. As we progress toward more advanced clinical development, we determined that taking the lead on the development and commercialization of this product candidate would provide us the greatest opportunity to maximize the value of Locteron.”