A bruised Cir­cas­sia of­floads debt by re­turn­ing COPD drugs to As­traZeneca

It had a glit­ter­ing £200 mil­lion mega-IPO on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change in 2014, but fail­ure af­ter tri­al fail­ure blight­ed its prospects. A bat­tered Cir­cas­sia Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, by 2017 re­liant on its asth­ma man­age­ment de­vice Niox for rev­enue, turned to fel­low UK drug­mak­er As­traZeneca to in­fuse some oxy­gen in­to its starved pipeline.

The com­pa­nies joined forces in an up to $300 mil­lion deal to de­vel­op and mar­ket Tu­dorza and Du­ak­lir, two of As­traZeneca’s chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease drugs, in the Unit­ed States. On Thurs­day, Cir­cas­sia hand­ed the two ap­proved drugs back to As­traZeneca.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER