Mereo bags rights to the lat­est As­traZeneca castoff, shifts fo­cus; Neos re­jects buy­out of­fer

→ Lon­don-based Mereo Bio­Phar­ma has picked off an op­tion on the rights to a Phase II drug from As­traZeneca, which has been steadi­ly di­vest­ing it­self of non-core or dis­ap­point­ing drugs. Mereo is pay­ing $5 mil­lion in cash and stock for the op­tion to AZD9668, an oral in­hibitor of neu­trophil elas­tase now be­ing steered in­to a Phase II for al­pha-1 an­tit­rypsin de­fi­cien­cy, or AATD. As­traZeneca has run the drug through sev­er­al res­pi­ra­to­ry Phase II tri­als, and now Mereo will shift fo­cus to the rare dis­ease. The deal lays out un­spec­i­fied pay­ments and mile­stones, if the drug hits its marks in the proof-of-con­cept study. Said Mereo CEO Denise Scots-Knight: “As­traZeneca has gen­er­at­ed a sub­stan­tial clin­i­cal da­ta pack­age on AZD9668 which in­cludes ex­ten­sive Phase II stud­ies in sev­er­al res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions that will in­form the ini­tial Phase II clin­i­cal study we are plan­ning for AATD.  We be­lieve that the neu­trophil elas­tase in­hibitor AZD9668 could pro­vide a new in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach for the treat­ment of AATD, which af­fects ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 pa­tients in the US and 120,000 pa­tients in Eu­rope.”

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