Boehringer deal shows growing interest in Alzheimer’s space

The fact that Boehringer Ingelheim, a company not know for its extravagance when it comes to both company M&A and even in-licensing deals, is paying Vitae Pharmaceuticals a $42m upfront fee for what is essentially a research project in Alzheimer’s, shows the growing desire among pharma companies to be the one that makes the breakthrough in the disease that is thought to effect 18 million people worldwide.

In the last 10 years there have been a total of 210 deals around Alzheimer’s products. While the majority of these have been either in-licensing or acquisition of individual products, the table below shows that there is an increasing trend for companies to buy whole businesses that have Alzheimer's drugs.

This year Roche increased its presence in the market with a $50m acquisition of Memory Pharmaceuticals, giving it rights to eight Alzheimer’s products, including two that it had previously partnered. This year there have already been 11 products sourced from company acquisitions, up from the 8 that occurred during the whole of 2008.

While the Memory deal may have been for phase I and II products, like many in the space the Boehringer deal is for products that have yet to reach the clinic. Since 1999 just under 70% of deals have been struck over either pre-clinical drugs or even earlier research products (see table below).

What is also interesting is that the relative early stage of many of the products has not prevented pharma companies from paying high looking upfront fees for what are very risky products. At the pre-clinical stage the average upfront fee is $26m, while for research projects the fee is surprisingly slightly higher at $27m.

But given the stats surrounding the disease it is easy to understand why pharma companies are happy to spend the money to ensure that if a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s is found they will be one of the beneficiaries. Last year Alzheimer drug sales reached $5bn, a figure that Boehringer estimates will rise to $14bn by 2015.

Although the number of product deals last year declined in comparison to the average number for the preceeding five years, the value of the deals was significant; the top four biggest single-product deals signed in the last ten years were all completed in 2008.

To date the most expensive deal for a single Azheimer’s product is $780, struck between Astellas Pharma and CoMentis for phase I product CTS-21166, a beta secretase (BACE) inhibitor similar to Vitae's candidates. But while the biodollar amount may look impressive the prize for the company which has scooped the most amount of cash up front for a single product goes to Medivation for Dimebon, which pocketed $225m in its deal with Pfizer last year (Medivation hits jackpot with Pfizer deal, September 3, 2008). A further $500m is due over the course of the development of the drug.

The majority of deals in the space have also tended to be for beta amyloid products, the in-licensing of Vitae’s products marks only the seventh deal for a BACE product in the last ten years.