Proximagen inks drug development deal

Proximagen Neuroscience has signed a sale and purchase agreement with Biovitrum to acquire Biovitrum's wholly owned subsidiary Cambridge Biotechnology (CBT), along with certain drug development programmes, directly from Biovitrum.

In consideration for these acquisitions, London-based Proximagen will pay Biovitrum a percentage of future revenues generated from the acquired drug development programmes. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of November.

As part of the acquisition, Proximagen will acquire certain CBT programmes, as well as two clinical-stage programmes (the 5-HT2c agonist programme and the 5-HT6 cognition programme) and a number of pre-clinical-stage programmes including VAP-1 and TrkA from Biovitrum.

The acquisition of CBT is said to be consistent with the strategy stated by Proximagen at the time of its £50m fundraising in June 2009 of raising capital to acquire later-stage drug development programmes and to further develop these programmes to commercialisation.

CBT, which had unaudited net assets of £109,000 as of 30 September 2009, will be acquired on a cash-free/debt-free basis and has not generated any third-party revenues.