AMAG Pharmaceuticals wants out of the women’s health business—and now it’s halfway there.
On Thursday the Waltham, MA-based biotech said it had found a buyer for prasterone (Intrarosa), a steroid designed to treat pain during intercourse associated with menopause, one of two commercialized drugs it has been shopping around.
The buyer of the AMAG Pharma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMAG]]) product is Ireland-based Millicent Pharma, a company formed in 2018 by a group of industry veterans and New York private equity firm The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CG]]). Millicent specializes in women’s health and menopause-related conditions; it launched with a vaginal ring treatment for symptoms associated with menopause it acquired from Allergan.
Millicent is paying $20 million up front for AMAG’s prasterone, and up to $105 million more depending on milestones tied to sales, including $25 million if net sales during any consecutive 12-month period top $65 million; $35 million more if they pass $115 million; and $45 million more if sales exceed $175 million.
Last year net sales of the treatment totaled $21.4 million, 32 percent more than in 2018, when the product brought in revenue of about $16.2 million.
CEO Scott Myers, a recent addition to the AMAG management team, said in a statement that the sale will help bring the company closer to its goal of profitability in 2020. The company recently reduced its workforce by 30 percent as part of those efforts.
Now AMAG Pharma’s divestment energy is squarely focused on finding a buyer for its remaining women’s health product, bremelanotide (Vyleesi), an injection used to treat premenopausal women experiencing generalized hypoactive sexual desire disorder, a condition characterized by low sexual desire causing distress or interpersonal difficulty in a patient who previously experienced no such problems.
