Biopharmaceutical company Horizon Pharma agreed on Monday to acquire River Vision Development Corp, a US-based thyroid eye disease (TED) treatment developer backed by pharmaceutical firms GlaxoSmithKline and Lundbeck, for an initial $145m.
The $145m will be provided in cash up front, and the price could rise in future if River Vision meets certain regulatory and sales milestones.
River Vision is developing a monoclonal antibody called teprotumumab to treat TED, a rare autoimmune inflammatory disorder that inflames the eye muscles and fatty tissue behind the eye to the point where a patient cannot close their eyes.
GlaxoSmithKline and Lundbeck co-led River Vision’s $17m series A round in 2012 through their SR One and Lundbeckfond Ventures subsidiaries. The round also featured Narrow River Management, the entity that founded River Vision in 2012.
The company subsequently raised $16.3m in equity financing over three rounds between January 2014 and January 2016, according to regulatory filings.
Timothy P. Walbert, Horizon Pharma’s chairman, president and chief executive, said: “This acquisition is an important step in our strategy of pursuing and acquiring development-stage medicines targeting rare diseases.
“With no approved medicines to treat thyroid eye disease, there is a significant unmet treatment need among the approximately 10,000 patients in the United States with moderate to severe disease and we look forward to beginning the pivotal study with teprotumumab in the second half of this year.”