Pfizer terminates Neurocrine partnership

Pfizer has announced it has cancelled its collaboration with Neurocrine Biosciences to develop and commercialise indiplon, an insomnia drug.

The drug has had a mixed regulatory success, which may be a reason why Pfizer has pulled its partnership. The FDA has approved indiplon in five and ten milligram formulations, but has not approved the 15 milligram version. Under the terms of the severance, Pfizer will continue to support Neurocrine for 180 days to ensure minimum disruption to the development of the drug.

Neurocrine has stated that it intends to develop and market the drug on its own and release it commercially as soon as possible after full approval. It also said it was looking at “business and commercial” alternatives, or other partnerships that could help speed up this process.

Gary A Lyons, president and chief executive officer of Neurocrine, remarked: “While we are disappointed that we will not be working with Pfizer for the commercialization of indiplon, Neurocrine is fully committed and prepared to develop and commercialize this product.”

“Neurocrine will reacquire full worldwide rights to this product which we believe has significant commercial value and we will evaluate commercial alternatives throughout various worldwide markets once our resubmissions have been made,” he added.

Mr Lyons concluded by saying he was confident about the company’s several products in the pipeline and phase II clinical trials and that they would create further partnership opportunities.

Indiplon works by binding to the GABA receptors, which are believed to be important in promoting sleep. Part of the drug’s promise was that it was found to bind to these receptors ten times more powerfully than Ambien, a Sanofi-Aventis insomnia drug.

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