Build­ing an or­phan pipeline, Hori­zon Phar­ma bags PhI­II-ready rare dis­ease drug in $145M buy­out

Eight months af­ter a lit­tle-known sub­sidiary group named Riv­er Vi­sion De­vel­op­ment Corp. won a break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion for its lead drug for a rare eye dis­ease, Hori­zon Phar­ma $HZNP has swooped in to pluck its sole drug as­set in a buy­out deal pow­ered with a $145 mil­lion up­front.

The com­pa­ny is a sub­sidiary of Nar­row Riv­er, a Rock­e­feller Cen­ter-based biotech which was set up by biotech vet­er­an David Mad­den, the chair­man at Dicer­na and a board mem­ber of Nav­i­tor. Mad­den got Riv­er Vi­sion start­ed with a $17 mil­lion round backed by GSK’s SR One along with Lund­beck­fond in 2012. Then he fol­lowed up with a li­cens­ing deal with Roche on tepro­tu­mum­ab (RV001), which had been part­nered with Gen­mab, which had dis­cov­ered the treat­ment.

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