When Al­con eye care spun out of No­var­tis as an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny, the oph­thal­mol­o­gy phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals busi­ness stayed at the Big Phar­ma. For Al­con, though, it was an “ob­vi­ous” gap in its eye care and eye health ex­per­tise, so it went out and be­gan ac­quir­ing and build­ing out a pre­scrip­tion eye drug port­fo­lio.

Now four years af­ter a hand­ful of ac­qui­si­tions — in­clud­ing a $770 mil­lion deal last Au­gust for Aerie Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals with two eye pre­scrip­tion meds plus a late-stage dry eye dis­ease can­di­date — Al­con is step­ping out with new mar­ket­ing around its grow­ing phar­ma port­fo­lio.

This week, the com­pa­ny is rolling out new con­tent and aware­ness work to high­light the need for ear­ly di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of glau­co­ma.

Ian Bell

“We think of our­selves as an oph­thalmic com­pa­ny,” said Ian Bell, pres­i­dent of glob­al busi­ness and in­no­va­tion. “We’re the lead­ers in most of the mar­kets we op­er­ate in — our con­tact lens port­fo­lio, our dry eye port­fo­lio, our oph­thalmic surgery equip­ment. But we had kind of stepped away from the phar­ma space be­cause we got ac­quired by No­var­tis. … It was one of the ob­vi­ous ar­eas that we weren’t in as an oph­thalmic com­pa­ny and we’ve been look­ing for a way back in to uti­lize our ex­per­tise and build on that with Aerie em­ploy­ees and its R&D par­tic­u­lar­ly to get us back in that space that makes a lot of sense.”

Al­con’s glau­co­ma ef­fort in­cludes a new video on its web­site and so­cial me­dia posts on In­sta­gram, Face­book and LinkedIn en­cour­ag­ing ear­ly di­ag­noses and pro­fes­sion­al care, linked to an eye doc­tor lo­ca­tor tool.

Is Bell con­cerned about a fu­ture where Al­con drugs would com­pete with No­var­tis? Not re­al­ly, he said. No­var­tis has sig­naled pre­scrip­tion oph­thal­mol­o­gy is no longer a key pri­or­i­ty — it sold off five pre­scrip­tion eye drugs last year to Har­row — and may ac­tu­al­ly rep­re­sent an ad­van­tage for Al­con.

“What’s in­ter­est­ing about it is we see (No­var­tis) step­ping away and Al­ler­gan got ac­quired by Ab­b­Vie so less of a fo­cus for them, so there’s pos­si­bly a mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty there. We kind of like our odds in that space as well. We’re in­ter­est­ed in prod­ucts that could have rev­enues of a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lion where­as Big Phar­ma is look­ing at $1 bil­lion. There may be a sweet spot for us where we’re able to ac­quire a few of those types of mol­e­cules and po­ten­tial­ly some R&D ca­pa­bil­i­ty that goes with it.”

Al­con’s eye care pro­fes­sion­al cus­tomers are on board, Bell said, adding that cus­tomers agree that Al­con’s ex­per­tise in the eye space and “un­der­stand­ing the needs of cus­tomers and help­ing meet those for years” is its hall­mark. His goal? Work­ing to “ap­ply that back in­to the phar­ma space.”

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.