Orexo To Acquire PharmaKodex

Orexo AB will acquire PharmaKodex Ltd., a UK-based drug delivery company with several ready-to-partner preclinical and early clinical projects focused on improving oral, sublingual and transdermal medication.

Orexo will acquire the company for a consideration to be paid in new Orexo shares and a second payment of either new Orexo shares or cash at Orexo’s option. Additional Orexo shares as the first payment may be issued in August 2009 unless Orexo opts for the second payment in cash. The transaction also provides payments based on profits from licenses of existing PharmaKodex programs and technologies, and certain milestones. Five PharmaKodex employees will join Orexo.

The company’s pipeline includes a preclinical program for rapid, sustained relief of migraine, as well as its clinical stage lead program PKX219, a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone for opioid-addiction therapy, with clinical studies ongoing in 2009 and a potential launch date of 2010/2011.

Torbjörn Bjerke, president and chief executive officer of Orexo, said, “This represents an expansion of Orexo’s original business model, which is to develop the optimum product for existing well-defined drug molecules, to solve safety, delivery or clinical needs with those molecules in order to create better and more competitive drug products.”