Roche inks $600 mn hormone disorders development deal with Chiasma

Swiss drugmaker Roche Holdings today inked a deal worth almost $600 million with US-based Chiasma to develop and market a treatment for growth hormone disorders.

The deal comes a year after Illumina, Inc, the US-based gene sequencing company rejected Roche' $5.7-billion hostile takeover bid. (See: Illumina rejects Roche's $5.7- bn hostile bid)

Basel, Switzerland-based Roche, the world's largest biotech company, has entered into an agreement to develop and commercialise privately-held Chiasma's         proprietary drug Octreolin, initially for acromegaly and subsequently for neuro-endocrine tumours. 

Octreolin is an investigational oral form of the peptide octreotide, a somatostatin analog that is commercially available only by injection. Octreolin is currently in a pivotal phase 3 clinical trial for acromegaly, a disorder that develops when a person's pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone.

Under  the terms of the agreement, Roche will receive a worldwide exclusive license to Octreolin, and get the rights to market Octreolin and in turn, give Genentech, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company rights to market the drug in the US after receiving regulatory approval.  

Roche said that Chiasma will continue development through completion of phase 3 clinical trial for acromegaly.