As in­vestors fret about Xyrem dura­bil­i­ty, Jazz spends $52M+ up­front to swal­low neu­ro-fo­cused biotech

With in­vestors get­ting jit­tery about the dura­bil­i­ty of Jazz Phar­ma’s cash-cow Xyrem, the spe­cial­ty bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drug­mak­er is ex­pand­ing its port­fo­lio with the pur­chase of Cavion, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny fo­cused on rare, chron­ic neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases.

Jazz $JAZZ paid $52.5 mil­lion up­front for the com­pa­ny, whose lead mol­e­cule — CX-8998 — is cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed in a mid-stage study in pa­tients with es­sen­tial tremor. The com­pa­ny’s port­fo­lio in­cludes a slate of T-type cal­ci­um chan­nel mod­u­la­tors. Cal­ci­um and ion chan­nels play a key role in neu­ronal sig­nal­ing, and the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy is en­gi­neered to re­store the brain’s nat­ur­al rhythms by mod­u­lat­ing over­ac­tive T-type cal­ci­um chan­nels.

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