Nektar gets $100 million milestone from AstraZeneca

2 April 2015

USA-based Nektar Therapeutics (Nasdaq: NKTR) says it has received a $100 million payment under a license agreement with Anglo-Swedish pharma major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN).

The cash payment under the Nektar-AstraZeneca accord was triggered by the first commercial sale of Movantik (naloxegol) in the USA, which launched there on March 31. Movantik is the first once-daily, oral peripherally-acting mu-opioid receptor antagonist (PAMORA) medication for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation (OIC) in adult patients with chronic, non-cancer pain.

AstraZeneca has a US co-commercialization agreement with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo (TYO: 4568) for Movantik, which was signed earlier this month (The Pharma Letter March 19).

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