Sandoz announced today that it will pay an undisclosed sum to buy Oriel Therapeutics, a private equity-owned US specialty generics company. Oriel develops respiratory products and comes with its own proprietary technology, FreePath, as well as an associated multidose dry powder inhaler, Solis. It also has a pipeline of three drugs, which it seems reasonable to presume are generic versions of Advair/Seretide, Symbicort and Spiriva.
In the light of this deal, Sandoz’s decision a month ago to hand back the US rights to Vectura’s generic Advair becomes more understandable. We assume that Oriel is more advanced in development – or has a better device – than Vectura, making Sandoz believe that it should get generic Advair to market in the US faster via this deal. And if not, it retains an option to market the Vectura product anyway. In addition, Sandoz will now own its drug delivery technology and broaden its development pipeline.
The benefits of this deal to Sandoz seem clear, but for Vectura, it is equally clear that the prospects for its own product, VR315, have taken a turn for the worse. Not only does it now appear unlikely to be the first on the market in the US, it will also find itself competing against its former partner, which has far greater marketing power than it does. This suggests that Vectura may have to re-think its current determination to complete the development of VR315 on its own and instead re-license it to a partner who can give Sandoz a run for its money. Time to talk to Teva, maybe?