Can re­for­mu­la­tion of an As­traZeneca castoff ri­val Takeda's new heart­burn drug? Here's a $26M bet on yes

Linaprazan didn’t make much of a mark at As­traZeneca. De­spite show­ing promise in ear­ly-stage stud­ies, the potas­si­um com­pet­i­tive acid block­er, or PCA-B, failed to beat Nex­i­um, the phar­ma gi­ant’s block­buster pro­ton pump in­hibitor in treat­ing acid re­flux. The drug was then un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly purged from the pipeline.

As the pre­clin­i­cal project leader in Möl­ndal, Swe­den, Kjell An­der­s­son wit­nessed the rise and fall of linaprazan. Hav­ing helped de­vel­op Nex­i­um, he al­so knew that about 40% of pa­tients still suf­fer from symp­toms, in­clud­ing heart­burn and chest pain, even if they’re on treat­ment. So to­geth­er with col­leagues Mikael Dahlström and Pe­ter Unge, he pur­chased rights to pro­drugs of linaprazan and launched his own start­up.

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