Pfizer strikes $1.24B deal with Biohaven to market migraine drug globally
PHOTO | FILE IMAGE
Biohaven Pharmaceuticals CEO Dr. Vlad Coric holds a Nurtec pill box.
Pharma giant Pfizer has struck another major deal with a New Haven bioscience company.
This time the pharma company is betting on Biohaven Pharmaceuticals and its migraine drug Nurtec ODT, also known as rimegepant, agreeing to pay $500 million upfront for the rights to commercialize the drug outside the U.S.
Biohaven announced the deal, potentially worth up to $1.24 billion, Tuesday morning ahead of its third-quarter earnings report.
“We believe that our collaboration with Pfizer can transform rimegepant into a massive global brand in regions and markets that today we just couldn't do alone,” Biohaven CEO Vlad Coric said on an earnings call with investors, citing Pfizer’s large global footprint and marketing expertise.
Under the agreement, Pfizer is paying Biohaven $150 million in cash upfront and will buy another $350 million worth of equity in Biohaven at a 25% premium to Monday’s closing price, the company said. Biohaven is eligible for another $740 million based on milestones as well as tiered double-digit royalties on ex-U.S. net sales.
The agreement also gives Pfizer commercialization rights outside the U.S. for zavegepant, another migraine drug Biohaven is developing, which is currently in Phase 3 human testing in both nasal spray and soft-gel versions.
Although Nurtec is currently not approved outside of the U.S., a decision by the European Medicines Agency is expected next year, and the drug is under review by several other regulatory authorities globally, Biohaven said. Biohaven will continue to be responsible for developing Nurtec ODT and marketing it domestically.
Biohaven has been making headlines in recent months for giving its much larger and deeper-pocketed pharma competitors a run for their money with Nurtec, part of a new class of migraine drugs that target the brain chemical CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide).
The FDA approved Nurtec for acute attacks in February 2020 and OK’d it for migraine prevention last May. Biohaven said Tuesday the drug brought in $136 million during the third quarter and roughly $336 million since it launched.
With more than 1.1 million prescriptions written to date, Coric said the drug is now the market leader for new oral migraine therapies and accounts for 57% of prescriptions to patients who are new to oral CGRP-targeting drugs.
Tuesday’s announcement marks the second large deal between Pfizer and an Elm City bioscience company in recent months.
In July, Pfizer paid Arvinas Inc. $1 billion upfront in a global collaboration deal potentially worth $2.4 billion for Arvinas’ experimental breast cancer drug ARV-471. The drug uses Arvinas’ protein-degader technology known as PROTACs.
Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com.
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