Biotechnology company Myriad Genetics Inc. (MYGN) said yesterday that it will end development of Alzheimer’s treatment candidate, Flurizan, after the drug failed a late-stage trial.

Learn more about Myriad Genetics Inc., and what they’re looking at in our exclusive interview with CEO Peter Meldrum

The company is also discussed in our biotechnology roundtable:

TWST: George, what’s the alternative? Is it looking to Big Pharma to step in nd  make investments and make partnership deals?
Mr. Huang: Yes, that’s certainly our view. We definitely believe partnerships  and putting yourself up for sale, through a bidding process, may be the way to  go here. Partnerships have really funded a lot of the major products in Phase II  and Phase III recently. I think there are mainly two types of deals. One is  technology platform driven, the other is really product driven, late-stage  products. There is definitely money there.  So in terms of partnerships, Synta (SNTA) was able to get $80 million up front from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) because they ran a good Phase II randomized trial in  metastatic melanoma. Looking at other product partnerships, just this week,  Myriad Genetics (MYGN) got $100 million cash up front for an Alzheimer’s drug  that essentially failed Phase II trials. In terms of partnerships, I think Big  Pharma is definitely desperate and with so much cash on their balance sheet, I  think they don’t mind throwing around another $50 or $100 million for  essentially the call on the drug in case it does work out.

For the full roundtable, including  a complete overview of this space and where Big Pharma is heading, click here. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Healthcare Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.