AstraZeneca gains rights to sell Ironwood's IBS drug in China

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) has entered into an agreement with the USA’s Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: IRWD) to co-develop and co-commercialize the latter’s irritable bowel syndrome  drug linaclotide in China.

Under the terms of the deal, AstraZeneca will make an upfront payment of $25 million to Ironwood and will share the net profits and losses associated with linaclotide in China, with AstraZeneca carrying 55% of each until a certain specified milestone is achieved, moving to a 50/50 split thereafter. Ironwood will also be eligible for $125 million in additional commercial milestone payments contingent on the achievement of certain sales targets.

Linaclotide is the first and only guanylate cyclase-C (GC-C) agonist approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) and chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC; The Pharma Letter September 3).