Inspire Pharma abandons CF drug to focus on eye care business

USA-based Inspire Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ISPH) has announced a strategic corporate restructuring designed to result in the company focusing activities on its eye care business, allowing it to fully leverage existing commercial capabilities, pipeline assets and related corporate development and licensing opportunities, and dropping its development of the cystic fibrosis drug denufosol tetrasodium.

Adrian Adams, president and chief executive of Inspire, stated: "We conducted a strategic evaluation of our operations following the recent announcement of the disappointing results with our cystic fibrosis (CF) program and believe the prudent strategy for Inspire is to leverage our eye care business and discontinue our pulmonary therapeutic focus...Our eye care business continues to generate an attractive revenue stream from growth in our anchor product, Azasite (azithromycin ophthalmic solution) 1% for bacterial conjunctivitis, and royalties from other ophthalmic products."

He continued: "Our assessment of the full data set from the TIGER-2 Phase III trial of denufosol tetrasodium for the treatment of CF, the open-label DEFY trial data and our current corporate resources supports our decision to discontinue Inspire's development of denufosol.”