Pfizer Offers Huge Royalty to Isis for Anti-Scarring Drug Jointly Developed with Excaliard Pharmaceuticals

Followed by Pfizer's acquisition of one of its partners, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an expert in antisense technology, is going to receive $14 million from Pfizer Inc. in royalty payments. The company is receiving the payment under its licensing agreement with Excaliard for EXC 001---a breakthrough therapy for treating disfiguring scars.

Earlier this week, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Pfizer will acquire Excaliard, a privately owned biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel drugs for the treatment of skin fibrosis, more commonly referred to as skin scarring. The acquisition is expected to close before the end of the year.

The local treatment of fibrosis for scarring was an area, which was outside the key focus of Isis. Instead of working on that subject internally, the company decided to partner with Excaliard, a company with a proven therapeutic expertise in this area.  Using its own resources and expertise, Excaliard has rapidly advanced EXC 001 to Phase 2. Pfizer will provide additional drug development expertise and experience to support the continued advancement of EXC 001. 

The market opportunity for the drugs for treating fibrosis related scars is huge, and the current investment reflects Pfizer’s strategy to expand its presence into this market. 

In a press release, Isis claimed that the acquisition of Excaliard by Pfizer exemplifies the potential of Isis' strategy to promote the use of antisense drugs in diseases that are outside of Isis' main therapeutic areas of focus. The company expects to financially benefit from the partnership with the drug companies that are going to use its antisense technology.

“Our business strategy allows us to exploit our antisense drug discovery platform to create many opportunities outside of our core areas of therapeutic focus. We have been extremely successful in implementing this unique strategy. To date, we have generated more than $450 million from our satellite company partners. Our partnership with Excaliard and their development of EXC 001 is the most recent example of the success of this strategy,” Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary at Isis, B. Lynne Parshall, J.D., noted in a statement.

Isis’ collaboration with Excaliard dates back to 2007. The collaboration was aimed at delivering antisense drugs for the local treatment of fibrotic diseases, including scarring. The collaboration led to the discovery of EXC 001. EXC 001 targets connective tissue growth factor, or CTGF, a growth factor that is over-expressed in damaged skin or tissue following a traumatic event. 

In early 2011, Excaliard reported positive data from three Phase 2 studies demonstrating that EXC 001 significantly reduced scar severity in both hypertrophic and fine line scarring. EXC 001 was safe and well tolerated in all subjects and is currently being evaluated in a Phase 2b study in patients following breast scar revision surgery.

“CTGF has been an interesting target for fibrosis for years, and now we have the clinical data that Excaliard generated with EXC 001, which shows the importance of CTGF for the treatment of fibrotic disorders. We have been successfully pursuing systemic applications for CTGF, which differs from the local applications pursued by Excaliard, to treat a range of fibrotic diseases and look forward to advancing our program toward clinical development,” Vice President of Drug Discovery and Corporate Development at Isis Brett Monia noted in a statement.