Endo Pharmaceuticals and Orion have established a collaboration to discover, develop, and commercialize new cancer drugs originating from both their discovery-stage pipelines. The partnership will focus on four of each firms’ candidates. Under terms of the deal all development costs will be shared, with Orion retaining marketing rights to resulting drugs in Europe (including Russia), and Endo retaining marketing rights in North America.
They will jointly decide on the best commercialization strategies for other countries, after Phase II development. In addition, both companies will be able to exclusively license each others’ development-ready programs at predetermined stages, and share development costs.
Finland-based Orion says the partnership will immediately extend both firms’ oncology pipeline. “The agreement is also perfectly in line with Orion’s R&D strategy to focus on risk-sharing partnerships,” remarks Reijo Salonen, Ph.D., svp for R&D at Orion. “This alliance marks another milestone in the transformation of Endo’s R&D platform,” adds Ivan Gergel, M.D., executive vp for R&D at Endo. “This type of collaboration fits well into our new, efficient, and effective virtual R&D model.”