Grünenthal and Amura Therapeutics Ltd collaboration in pain and inflammation

The focus of this collaboration is the development of protease inhibitors which play a key role in pain and inflammation, key focus areas in Grünenthal’s research-focused Strategic Business Unit Grünenthal Innovation.

Under the terms of the agreement Grünenthal and Amura will combine their respective expertise to collaborate on the development of cathepsin inhibitors to treat pain and inflammation. Starting from advanced lead compounds generated from Amura, Grünenthal will add its key expertise to the continued development of these small molecule drugs and assume responsibility for further research and development.

Grünenthal takes exclusive rights for worldwide clinical development, manufacturing and commercialisation of potential new pharmaceutical products arising from the collaboration. Grünenthal has made an undisclosed upfront payment, will make further milestone payments and is funding the costs under the running agreement.

“We are excited about this collaboration with Amura Therapeutics LTD. Our expertise, strength and innovative power in developing therapies for patients suffering from pain and inflammatory diseases hopefully will help these patients in the future as these are still areas of unmet medical need”, said Dr. Klaus-Dieter Langner, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Grünenthal Innovation.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr David Brown, Chairman of Amura, said, “We are delighted to have entered into this exciting collaboration with Grünenthal, a global leader in developing treatments for pain. This Agreement provides confirmation of the scientific and commercial validity of Amura’s novel AMcore™ platform and we look forward to a fruitful partnership with Grünenthal and developing new medicines in an area of unmet medical need.”

To account for the importance of proprietary research for Grünenthal and ensure the necessary focus, the Strategic Business Unit Grünenthal Innovation has been created. It encompasses the value generation from drug discovery to Proof-of-Concept in humans as well as the development of new drug-delivery technologies. This business model builds on true partnership, especially in co-development and co-commercialisation, in order to bring real medical innovation to the market as fast as possible for the benefit of patients.

With regard to NCEs, the focus lies on selected therapeutic areas. The later stage pipeline continues to build on the company’s leadership in developing new pain therapeutics, while in parallel a second pillar has been built: inflammation. This approach utilises the highly interesting overlap and synergies between pain and inflammation, while at the same time establishes a unique position within the broad variety of inflammatory diseases.

The Grünenthal Group is an independent, family-owned, international research-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Aachen, Germany. Building on its unique position in pain, its objective is to become the most patient-centric company and thus to be a leader in therapy innovation.

Grünenthal is one of the last five research-oriented pharmaceutical corporations with headquarters in Germany which sustainably invests in research and development. These investments amounted to about 25% of revenues in 2011. Grünenthal’s research and development strategy concentrates on select fields of therapy and state-of-the-art technologies. We focus on the intensive search for new ways to treat pain better, more effectively and with fewer side-effects than before.

Altogether, the Grünenthal Group has affiliates in 26 countries worldwide. Grünenthal products are sold in more than 155 countries and today approx. 4,200 employees are working for the Grünenthal Group worldwide. In 2011, Grünenthal achieved revenues of €947m.

Amura has a number of advanced pre-clinical candidates, which target distinct enzymes. These enzymes are implicated in a wide a range of commercially attractive therapeutic indications such as neuropathic pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, auto-immune conditions and metastatic bone disease. Lead molecules and first rate back-up molecules are now available for partnering. Amura is a venture capital backed company is majority owned by Avlar Bioventures Ltd., Madingley, Cambs.