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AZ Joins Spin-Out Set, Forms GI Play Albireo

 
• By Chris Morrison

AstraZeneca has completed its first ever biotech spin out, creating the Swedish biotech firm Albireo with backing led by Nomura Phase4 Ventures. The deal underscores pharma's disenchantment with certain aspects of GI drug development and may blaze a trail for other non-core areas of R&D at the drugmaker.

In mid February, AstraZeneca PLC completed its first ever biotech spin-out, backed by $27 million from Nomura Phase4 Ventures, TVM Capital, and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, in the first close of a round that could reach $40 million. [See Deal] The formation of Albireo AB, a Gothenburg-based gastrointestinal play with a clinical-stage chronic constipation candidate and a small handful of undisclosed preclinical compounds, charts new territory for the Big Pharma and suggests a practical outlook when it comes to assets that have been sidelined as part of a strategic review—even if the company is in no hurry to repeat the process immediately.

Albireo begins life focused on ALBI 3309, an orally available novel-mechanism molecule first tested in chronic constipation; AstraZeneca had previously...

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