Molecular Partners Seeks to Disrupt Eye-Drug Market, CEO Says
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Molecular Partners AG, a Swiss biotechnology company holding an initial public offering this week, plans to challenge Roche Holding AG and Novartis AG in a $6 billion eye-drug market with an experimental treatment, its chief executive officer said.
The drug, Abicipar, may be more convenient for patients compared to existing medicines such as Lucentis, marketed by Novartis and Roche, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Eylea, CEO Christian Zahnd said in an phone interview last week.
“There is definitely room for a third drug on the market as patients don’t have to use it as often as comparable therapies,” he said, declining to provide peak sales estimates for Abicipar.
The company will test investor demand this week after the recent stock market tumble. Molecular Partners seeks to raise as much as 151 million Swiss francs ($160 million) to fund development of its drug pipeline until it receives income from Abicipar, which it licensed to Allergan Inc. The drug may enter the third and final phase of clinical tests in the second quarter of 2015, said Zahnd, who helped found the company 10 years ago.
Molecular Partners focuses on the discovery and development of protein therapies. Abicipar is its most advanced drug candidate, being developed for treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration and for diabetic macular edema. Both diseases can lead to blindness and Lucentis may require as many as 11 eye injections per year. Molecular Partners seeks to reduce that to four per year.
‘Shake Up’
“If you want to shake up a market with global companies you need to be significantly better,” said Michael Nawrath, an analyst at Zuercher Kantonalbank. “Whether Molecular Partners will be capable of this has to be proven.”
Molecular Partners would be the first initial public offering of a Swiss biotechnology company in five years.
After European stock markets declined last week, Zahnd said there are no plans to postpone the company’s trading debut, scheduled for Oct. 22.
“Interest by investors both in the U.S. and in Europe is very high,” he said. “Of course, if circumstances change fundamentally, we wouldn’t do anything bad for the company.”
–With assistance from Albertina Torsoli in Geneva.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jan-Henrik Förster in Zurich at jforster20@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mariajose Vera at mvera1@bloomberg.net; Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net Thomas Mulier
