Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Merck Could Pay KalVista Up To $715 Million For Phase II Diabetes-Related Eye Treatments...


The upfronts here -- payable by Kenilworth -- are fairly modest, with a less than $10 million investment in KalVista's equity, for an about 10 per cent stake in of KalVista, plus nonrefundable R&D cash allotment draw of about $37 million.

Diabetics face daunting vision loss, in many, many advanced cases -- and these proprietary KalVista investigational small molecule protease inhibitors, ultimately in an oral form, may provide a meaningful advance in treatment options.

The big money (potentially up to three quarters of a billion dollars) is contingent on research-, development-, study- and regulatory-filing-milestones being met. Here's a bit -- but do go read it all:

. . . .“We are pleased to collaborate with Merck for the continuing development of KVD001 and future oral programs for patients with DME,” said Andrew Crockett, Chief Executive Officer of KalVista. “Plasma kallikrein inhibition is a novel approach to the treatment of DME that we believe may offer benefit to a significant number of patients, and an oral therapy particularly would represent a groundbreaking advance for treatment of this indication.

We have always believed that development and commercialization of our DME therapies would require the resources of a large pharmaceutical company, and we believe Merck has the wherewithal and resources to help us advance development of our DME drug candidates. Importantly for KalVista, this collaboration also meets our strategic objectives of maintaining control of our oral HAE portfolio that we plan to develop independently. We look forward to providing more details about the Phase 2 trial for KVD001 in DME patients as the trial commences.”. . .


Now you know -- and onward, with a grin -- one full year later. . . and more.

नमस्ते

No comments: