Pfiz­er los­es key Lyri­ca patent bat­tle in the UK; Kleo Phar­ma clos­es $21M Se­ries B round

→ The UK Supreme Court ruled against Pfiz­er $PFE and a patent in­volv­ing its block­buster painkiller Lyri­ca, in a ma­jor blow to the US drug­mak­er on Wednes­day. Orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped for epilep­sy, the drug was even­tu­al­ly cleared for use in neu­ro­path­ic pain that lat­er be­came its key mar­ket, mak­ing it one of Pfiz­er’s most suc­cess­ful drugs in the UK. Pfiz­er was hop­ing to pro­long a sec­ondary med­ical use patent for neu­ro­path­ic pain for the prod­uct, as the ba­sic patent on Lyri­ca that ex­pired five years ago al­lowed gener­ic drug­mak­ers to launch cheap­er ver­sions of the med­i­cine car­ry­ing a “skin­ny la­bel” lim­it­ing their use to epilep­sy and gen­er­al anx­i­ety dis­or­der, Reuters re­port­ed, These gener­ics would in­evitably be used as painkillers, Pfiz­er claimed in a law­suit, but af­ter the ap­peal was re­ject­ed in 2016, the case reached the SC. Pfiz­er’s sec­ondary neu­ro­path­ic pain patent ex­pired last year, the re­port added. The SC’s de­ci­sion con­sti­tutes a win for gener­ic drug­mak­ers Al­ler­gan $AGN and My­lan $MYL.

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