San Antonio — Women’s health company Evestra has licensed some of its commercialization rights for an unspecified female urological product to its existing partner Gedeon Richter, a Hungarian specialty pharmaceutical company. Evestra says Richter gained the rights for certain areas outside of the U.S.
Richter is giving San Antonio-based Evestra an undisclosed upfront payment that’s helping cover research and development on the product, which Evestra is leading. The deal also includes various potential future development, regulatory, sales, and royalty payments.
Evestra and Gedeon Richter have collaborated previously. In February 2015, Richter gave the company a $5 million convertible loan to help Evestra develop its pipeline, particularly vaginal ring products that release low doses of estrogen and progesteron, through clinical stages. The two products Richter said it licensed at the time were called EVE-112 and EVE-116.
Richter reported 1.25 billion euros (about $1.33 billion) in revenue in 2016. Richter can decide after three years whether it wants Evestra to repay its loan or to convert it into equity in the San Antonio company.
Founded in 2007, Evestra does research in a variety of areas of women’s health, including hormone replacement therapy, endometriosis, and breast cancer. It’s previously licensed other fertility control products, including a deal it announced last month with the U.S. division of Mumbai-based Glenmark Pharmaceuticals to try to bring a generic version of Merck’s (NYSE: [[ticker:MRK]]) NuvaRing to market.
The U.S. division of Glenmark, which is based in Mahwah, NJ, is getting the marketing and distribution rights for the generic drug product in the U.S., as well as an option to commercialize two other vaginal rings in development, Glenmark says. In return, Evestra gets potential milestone and royalty payments as it continues to develop and commercialize the drug, called EVE-119, with Glenmark.
