This collaboration will leverage Click’s demonstrated ability to discover and validate a software application and deploy it commercially, with Otsuka’s expertise in developing approved prescription therapies for patients with serious mental illnesses, including Otsuka’s established development and commercialization capabilities.
The companies believe digital therapeutics align naturally with psychiatry and have significant potential to transform mental healthcare. Together, the companies aim to bring to market a new offering that will provide a novel treatment for patients with MDD.
Otsuka has agreed to commit capital to fully fund development of Click’s novel mobile application ‘CT-152’ for MDD, and to commercialize this application world-wide upon achievement of regulatory approvals.
Otsuka will pay Click up to $10 million in upfront and regulatory milestone payments, along with an estimated $20 million in development funding. An additional $272 million in commercial milestone payments are contingent upon regulatory approvals. In addition, Click will receive tiered, double-digit royalties on global sales of the software and the digital therapeutic applications that result.
Otsuka America Otsuka North America pharmaceutical business division president and CEO Kabir Nath said: “This collaboration signals Otsuka’s commitment to meet patients’ unmet medical needs by developing solutions far beyond medication. Our goal is to deliver evidence-based cognitive therapies to a broader population of patients with MDD than is currently feasible, due to the challenges of a shortage of mental health professionals and limited time for them to conduct cognitive therapy.
“We are proud to be one of the few pharmaceutical companies that continues to invest in developing medicinal and digital products for the treatment of mental illnesses, and we are doing so by breaking down barriers and collaborating with leading therapeutic technology companies, such as Click, which share our vision.”
According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease.
Otsuka and Click believe that new approaches are needed to address this condition, including pioneering ways to use technology and data in support of better patient outcomes.
Click chairman and CEO David Benshoof Klein said: “Otsuka has established itself as the leading innovator in digital medicine for psychiatry, and we are thrilled to collaborate with their clinical and commercial experts on our CT-152 digital therapeutic for the treatment of depression.
“This collaboration symbolizes the growing recognition that digital therapeutics are a new category of treatment with the potential to become a routine treatment option for physicians for their patients.
“The potential value of these treatments is clear: they provide validated tools that may be an effective treatment option to bring the power and accessibility of digital technologies for the benefit of the patient and physician.
“This recognition is also shared by regulators helping to build new pre-market review programs uniquely suited for digital therapeutics, while still retaining the traditional level of rigor and scrutiny that clinical studies require.”
Source: Company Press Release