Pfizer’s recent bidding war for an obesity biotech clearly hasn’t satiated the pharma’s appetite for new GLP-1 therapies—at least going by this morning’s $1.9 billion biobucks deal.
The U.S. drugmaker is paying Yao Pharma—a subsidiary of Fosun Pharmaceutical—$150 million upfront for the worldwide rights to a GLP-1 agonist dubbed YP05002 and any other GLP-1 agonists it’s been working on. Yao Pharma has already taken YP05002 into a phase 1 weight management study in Australia, and this morning’s deal will allow the Chinese company to complete that trial.
Yao Pharma could ultimately be in line for development, regulatory and commercial milestones stretching to $1.93 billion, as well as tiered royalties on sales. Like other GLP-1s, Yao Pharma has touted YP05002’s potential beyond weight loss in conditions such as diabetes and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
Pfizer’s plan is to evaluate YP05002 in combination with its GIPR antagonist PF-07976016 as well as other small molecules in the pharma’s pipeline.
Until a few weeks ago, PF-07976016 was all that was left of Pfizer’s obesity pipeline after the company scrapped three different GLP-1 candidates for reasons ranging from elevated liver enzymes to uninspiring phase 1 data.
However, the company wasn’t ready to abandon the field. Pfizer recently secured ownership of GLP-1 biotech Metsera at an increased price, after a surprise bidding war with Novo Nordisk briefly threatened to derail proceedings.
Now, Pfizer also has another GLP-1 drug to slot in alongside MET-097i, Metsera’s injectable GLP-1 asset in phase 2b testing that could be dosed just once a month.
Commenting on this morning’s deal for YP05002, Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Chris Boshoff, M.D., Ph.D., reaffirmed that cardiometabolic research is a “strategic priority for Pfizer that has the potential to be a key driver of growth for our business.”
“We look forward to contributing our expertise and resources to continue the development of this investigational GLP-1 small molecule which complements and strengthens our growing portfolio of novel candidates for treating obesity and its adjacent diseases,” Boshoff added.
Fosun has been busy licensing the rights to its various clinical-stage therapies this year, including penning three inflammatory-disease-focused pacts over as many weeks in the summer.
“The partnership with Pfizer marks the international recognition of Yao Pharma's R&D capabilities,” Yao Pharma’s chairman Liu Qiang said in a separate release.
“Leveraging Pfizer's exceptional global development experience and commercialization network, along with Yao Pharma's profound expertise in small molecule R&D and manufacturing, our shared goal is to enable this innovative drug candidate to be developed and commercialized in order to benefit patients worldwide more quickly and broadly,” he added.