AstraZeneca Working with Eolas Therapeutics on Anti-Addiction Drug

Eolas Therapeutics, a Carlsbad, CA-based startup developing new drugs for treating addiction, said it has signed a global licensing and partnership agreement with AstraZeneca (NYSE: [[ticker:AZN]]) to advance development of its experimental drug, designed to block a neuropeptide associated with addiction to nicotine and stimulants such as cocaine, opiates, and alcohol.

Details concerning the deal were not disclosed in a statement today, although Eolas says potential revenue could eventually exceed $145 million, including upfront and milestone payments, as well as royalties from future commercial sales. Founded in 2012, the company is unrelated to Tyler, TX-based Eolas, a bioinformatics company.

Eolas Therapeutics says it received a Blueprint Neurotherapeutics (BPN) grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance its lead drug candidate, an orexin-1 receptor antagonist for smoking cessation (and for treating other addictions) from the preclinical stage through early clinical trials.

The company says it is the first BPN development program to move from concept to commercial licensing. “Our two companies share a vision for greatly improving the lives of patients affected by addiction and other neurological disorders,” said Albert Man, the founder and CEO of Eolas Therapeutics.

“The goal of the BPN is to speed the practical application of promising neuroscience projects by supporting early-stage research that will attract industry support,” said Rajesh Ranganathan, an NIH director overseeing the BPN program for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in the company’s statement. The Eolas-AstraZeneca deal “shows that the BPN strategy is working and that combining the strengths and capabilities of industry and academia can accelerate research,” Ranganathan said.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.