Leo Phar­ma lines up an op­tion to buy Bridge­Bio's Pelle­Pharm and its PhI­II rare skin can­cer drug

Der­ma­tol­ogy com­pa­ny Leo Phar­ma’s vo­ra­cious ap­petite for part­ner­ships has been fu­eled with yet an­oth­er deal, this time with Bridge­Bio’s Pelle­Pharm. The Dan­ish drug­mak­er has tak­en a mi­nor­i­ty stake and agreed to pro­vide R&D sup­port to the Bay Area com­pa­ny, which is set to test its rare skin can­cer drug, patideg­ib, in a Phase III tri­al.

The cen­tu­ry old drug­mak­er, which con­sum­mat­ed a deal to swal­low Ger­man gi­ant Bay­er’s pre­scrip­tion der­ma­tol­ogy busi­ness in the Unit­ed States in ad­di­tion to forg­ing pacts with Mor­phoSys and Zymeworks $ZYME ear­li­er this year, has ini­tial­ly com­mit­ted $70 mil­lion com­prised of eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing and fi­nan­cial R&D sup­port for a late-stage tri­al eval­u­at­ing Pelle­Pharm’s patideg­ib for Gor­lin syn­drome – a rare, ge­net­ic skin dis­ease that af­fects 10,000 in the Unit­ed States.

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