Acadia Pharmaceuticals has seen its share of ups and downs as it tries to add indications to antipsychotic Nuplazid, its sole marketed drug. Now, it’s expanding its scope and adding a clutch of new pipeline hopefuls through a buyout that’s worth $52.5 million upfront but that could net CerSci Therapeutics shareholders $887 million in milestones.
The deal closed Monday and saw Acadia pick up all outstanding shares of CerSci for $52.5 million, mostly in Acadia stock. Through the deal, the company snagged programs at varying stages of development, including a non-opioid pain med in phase 1, preclinical programs in migraine and painful diabetic neuropathy and discovery-stage efforts in neurodegenerative disease and opioid use disorder.
The lead program, now called ACP-044, is a reactive species decomposition accelerant, or RSDAx, designed to disrupt pathways that sensitize neurons to pain. This class of drugs is thought to target multiple pain pathways, and ACP-044 has shown promise in animal models of pain including inflammatory, neuropathic and incisional pain.
CerSci had been developing ACP-044 for post-surgical pain and neuropathic pain, which is caused by damage or disease affecting the nervous system. A phase 1 trial is on deck in the first half of 2021.
“There is an urgent need for new approaches to treat pain without causing addiction,” Acadia CEO Steve Davis said in a statement. “We are excited by the potential clinical utility of this program across multiple pain modalities due to its novel non-opioid mechanism of action. By acquiring CerSci, Acadia is further strengthening our development pipeline for long-term growth in central nervous system disorders.”
CerSci’s pipeline joins Nuplazid, which Acadia has been developing for negative symptoms of schizophrenia and dementia-related psychosis. The company is also developing trofinetide, a treatment for Rett syndrome licensed from Neuren Pharmaceuticals.
The FDA approved Nuplazid in 2016 as a treatment to ward off hallucinations and delusions in patients with Parkinson’s disease. A phase 3 trial testing the drug as an add-on treatment for schizophrenia came up short last summer, but promising phase 2 data reported in November could help it get back on track.
Nuplazid, added to standard-of-care antipsychotics, outshone antipsychotics alone in reducing the negative symptoms of schizophrenia after 26 weeks in patients with controlled positive symptoms. Though the results set the scene for a second phase 2 study, analysts don’t expect it to be a quick turnaround: The trial will likely last up to two and a half years, SVB Leerink analyst Marc Goodman wrote at the time.
Meanwhile, the company weathered ongoing scrutiny from the Department of Justice over its marketing of Nuplazid. But it found another bright spot in dementia-related psychosis last September: Acadia stopped a phase 3 trial early because Nuplazid did so well against placebo at staving off relapses of psychosis.