Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Foresee Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. has announced that the companies have entered into an exclusive worldwide development and option agreement to leverage Foresee’s proprietary and unique Stabilized Injectable Formulation (SIF) platform for the development of long duration, controlled release formulations of a peptide therapeutic.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ferring will fund the development work and, upon completion, Ferring will have the right to exercise its option and enter into a definitive agreement with Foresee. Execution of a definitive agreement would entitle Foresee to additional payments including upfront, milestones and royalties based on net sales of the product(s) commercialized by Ferring.
“We have been impressed with Foresee’s achievements to date and we see value in its SIF platform technology,” said Alan S. Harris, Senior vice president, R&D executive office at Ferring. “The technical barriers Foresee has overcome in developing stable, formulated peptides in solution for controlled release therapy for three and six-month durations of action after a single injection are quite significant, and this gives us much confidence in the potential of the SIF platform applied to complex peptide drug substances. We are enthusiastic about this new collaboration.”
“We are excited about entering into this collaboration with Ferring, a global specialty pharmaceutical company with a long-standing history of innovation in the area of injectable therapeutic peptides and the application of novel formulations and delivery technologies to generate differentiated product profiles,” said Dr. Ben Chien, chairman and chief executive officer of Foresee. “We are confident that our SIF platform will provide significant value to Ferring’s R&D product portfolio and very much look forward to working with them on this project.”
Ferring Pharmaceuticals is a research-driven, specialty biopharmaceutical group active in global markets. The company identifies, develops and markets innovative products in the areas of reproductive health, urology, gastroenterology, endocrinology and orthopaedics.
Foresee is a Taiwan and US-based biopharmaceutical company listed on the Taipei Exchange. Foresee’s R&D efforts are focused in two key areas, namely its unique stabilized injectable formulation (SIF) depot delivery platform and derived drug products targeting large specialty markets, and its transformative early stage preclinical and clinical NCE programs targeting inflammatory & fibrotic diseases and other disease areas with high unmet needs.