Baxter International Inc. has signed research agreements with biotech companies in California and England as part of its effort to protect its blood-clotting drug franchise.
The Deerfield-based medical products giant said it signed late last month “collaborative research agreements” with Nektar Therapeutics Inc. of San Carlos, Calif., and Lipoxen Technologies of London to develop longer acting blood-clotting drugs. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
For years Baxter has sold some of the industry’s leading clotting drugs. Its next generation drug, Advate, for hemophilia patients generated $265 million in sales in the first half of this year.
But Advate and other recombinant blood therapies Baxter sells for hemophilia patients could have to be injected up to three times a week for some patients, particularly children and adolescents. The new technologies being developed by Nektar and Lipoxen “may decrease the frequency of injections and improve convenience,” Baxter said in a statement.
Nektar, for example, says it is working on longer acting therapeutic forms that would reduce injection to once a week. A Nektar spokeswoman said the first product is expected to begin human clinical testing next year and, “if clinical trials go well, reach the market as early as 2010.”
Baxter’s various U.S. patents for Advate run through the end of the decade so the company has enough time to develop a longer-lasting version that would allow the company to maintain market share before a cheaper generic would emerge as a threat.
Advate was approved two years ago by the Food and Drug Administration as the first genetically engineered clotting treatment made without added animal or human proteins. Researchers who have studied the drug believe Advate is safer than its animal and human protein-based rivals in treating hemophilia patients vulnerable to blood-borne viruses such as HIV or hepatitis.
Children’s chief adds job: Patrick Magoon, longtime president and chief executive of Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, this week began a two-year stint as chairman of the nation’s top association for children’s inpatient health facilities.
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In his role, Magoon, 52, will help lobby in Washington as chairman of the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions, which represents the various interests of children’s hospitals across the country.
The group represents nearly 200 children’s hospitals in the U.S. Magoon has been with Children’s since 1980 in various management positions, including the last nine years as chief executive of the hospital, located in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Under Magoon’s watch the hospital engineered a financial turnaround in the late 1990s and is looking at sites where it may build a new hospital.
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