Chiesi picks a pipeline fight with No­var­tis, go­ing head-to-head on a big new tar­get for asth­ma

Ear­ly in 2016 the UK’s Atopix Ther­a­peu­tics was forced to ad­mit that its lead drug, OC459, had failed a mid-stage study for atopic der­mati­tis. But it’s al­so been build­ing on a pos­i­tive set of mid-stage da­ta for eosinophilic asth­ma, and to­day Italy’s Chiesi has bagged the drug and the com­pa­ny in an $82 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion deal.

Atopix has been square­ly fo­cused on a hot spot in asth­ma re­search. Eosinophilic asth­ma — which is par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere — is suf­fered by about 40% of the over­all pop­u­la­tion. And it’s been at­tract­ing some pow­er­house at­ten­tion from the top play­ers in the field al­so in­ter­est­ed in Atopix’s fo­cus on a CRTh2 an­tag­o­nist.

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