AstraZeneca acquires Novexel

LONDON AstraZeneca will acquire a French infection research company, the Anglo-Swedish drug maker announced Wednesday.

AstraZeneca said it had entered an agreement to acquire all shares of the private company Novexel for $350 million, plus up to $75 million in potential milestone payments to Novexel shareholders and $80 million, equivalent to the cash balance of Novexel at the close of the deal.

In a related deal, AstraZeneca will collaborate with New York-based Forest Labs on development and commercialization of the antibiotics CAZ104 (ceftazidime and NXL-104) and CEF104 (ceftaroline and NXL-104), both combination antibiotics that use Novexel’s investigational compound NXL-104 to overcome antibiotic resistance and treat the increasing number of infections resistant to existing therapies. AstraZeneca and Forest expect to begin phase 3 trials of CAZ104 in late 2010 and phase 2 trials of CEF104 at the same time, with plans to file for regulatory approval of CAZ104 in the United States and Europe in 2012.

The deal stems from an agreement between Forest and Novexel in January 2008 and another between Forest and AstraZeneca in August 2009. The two companies will share development costs of the two drugs, and Forest will have rights to commercialize them in North America; Takeda will have commercialization rights for CEF104 in Japan. Financial terms of the AstraZeneca-Forest deal were not specified, though AstraZeneca will pay undisclosed royalties to Forest on international sales of CEF104.