Af­ter ax­ing a top drug, Mil­len­do bags a PhII re­place­ment with biotech buy­out

Mil­len­do Ther­a­peu­tics has ac­quired a small French biotech named Al­izé Phar­ma SAS  ̶  and its Phase II obe­si­ty-re­lat­ed drug  ̶  in a deal that helps fill out Mil­len­do’s pre­vi­ous­ly thin­ning pipeline in or­phan en­docrine dis­eases.

Mil­len­do wouldn’t dis­close the pric­etag, but said the ac­qui­si­tion was an all-stock trans­ac­tion. The deal gets Mil­len­do a Phase II as­set called liv­o­le­tide, a drug meant to treat a rare ge­net­ic dis­ease called Prad­er-Willi Syn­drome (the most com­mon form of ge­net­ic obe­si­ty). A big con­cern for these pa­tients is the ex­ces­sive hunger, or hy­per­pha­gia, that re­sults in over-eat­ing. Pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal da­ta on liv­o­le­tide have in­di­cat­ed that the drug de­creas­es hy­per­pha­gia and neg­a­tive food-re­lat­ed be­hav­iors, Mil­len­do says.

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