By Ben Hirschler
LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline hasbought global rights to an experimental drug from Johnson &Johnson for up to 175 million pounds ($230 million),raising its bet on a new generation of biotech medicines forsevere asthma.
The British drugmaker recently launched Nucala, its firstinjectable biological asthma drug, and is looking for additionaltreatments to help more patients who are still struggling withbreathing problems.
Up to 20 percent of asthma patients suffer from severedisease that is not well controlled with traditional inhalers.Nucala helps around a fifth of them, leaving considerable unmetneed and a potentially large market, since severe asthmaaccounts for 70 to 80 percent of all asthma costs.
The new medicine, CNTO 7160, which is in Phase I clinicaldevelopment at J&J's Janssen unit, targets a protein calledinterleukin-33, or IL-33, known to play a role in inflammation.
Because it acts upstream in the biological cascaderesponsible for asthma, hitting IL-33 may have advantages overcompeting approaches that block only a subset of inflammatorytriggers. However, its broad action could also cause more sideeffects.
GSK plans to investigate the drug's potential in Phase IIstudies starting next year. The medicine is unlikely to reachthe market before around 2023, according to Dave Allen, GSK'shead of respiratory R&D.
EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCT
GSK is not alone in chasing IL-33 as a new drug target.Roche's Genentech unit in January acquired rights to asimilar experimental product from Amgen, for anundisclosed sum, and AnaptysBio is also working on arival treatment.
Allen said all three antibody-based therapies were at asimilar stage of development.
GSK intends to use CNTO 7160 to help patients who don'trespond to Nucala and whose disease appears to be driven byinflammatory cells called neutrophils.
"This patient population has notably poor outcomes. Theyhave a lot of exacerbations, very poor lung function, and theyreally do need something," Allen told Reuters.
IL-33 has also been implicated in other diseases, includingatopic dermatitis and allergies to peanuts and other foods, butAllen said GSK would focus first on asthma.
Respiratory medicine is GSK's most important pharmaceuticalbusiness. It has dominated the sector for more than 40 years butfaces increasing competition from rivals.
By contrast, CNTO 7160 was viewed as a non-core asset atJ&J.
Under the terms of the deal, Janssen gets an upfront paymentplus development and first commercial sales milestone paymentsthat could amount to 175 million pounds. Janssen will also beentitled to tiered royalties and further payments depending onthe drug's sales. (Editing by David Holmes)