Pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck agreed on Friday to acquire Netherlands-based central nervous system (CNS) disorder therapy developer Prexton Therapeutics for up to €905m ($1.11m), allowing another pharmaceutical company, Merck Group, to exit.
Lundbeck will pay €100m up front, with the rest to come in the form of development and sales milestone payments. Prexton had raised approximately $41m in funding.
Founded in 2012, Prexton is developing foliglurax, a small-molecule modulator of a glutamate receptor that could potentially be an oral treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
Prexton has concluded a successful oral dose phase 1 clinical trial for Foliglurax and it initiated a phase 2 trial in July 2017. It expects to secure data from the trial in the first half of 2019.
The company emerged from Merck subsidiary Merck Serono’s Entrepreneur Partnership Program and received $10m in a 2015 series A round featuring Merck Serono’s corporate venturing arm, MS Ventures, as well as venture capital firms Sunstone Capital and Ysios Capital.
Sunstone, Ysios and another Merck unit, Merck Ventures, returned for Prexton’s $31m series B round in February 2017, which was co-led by VC firms Forbion Capital Partners and Seroba Life Sciences.
Anders Götzsche, Lundbeck’s chief financial officer and interim chief executive, said: “By acquiring Prexton, Lundbeck will obtain global rights to foliglurax, an exciting first-in-class compound, and gain full control of the asset.
“Foliglurax addresses high unmet needs with its potential indication in Parkinson’s fitting perfectly within Lundbeck’s core areas and this treatment option also appears to be highly interesting for patients, physicians and payors.”