SkyePharma reviews options as no buyer found

UK-based drug-delivery specialist SkyePharma is reviewing its options for the future, after its announcement last November of an unsolicited offer for the firm and its decision to consider alternative strategies has produced no buyer for the company as a whole that the board could recommend to shareholders (Marketletter November 21, 2005).

However, the board has concluded that, in the interests of returning the company to sustainable profitability in the shortest possible time, SkyePharma should concentrate on oral and pulmonary products and divest its injectable business interests, for which a number of potential purchasers were identified during the strategic review.

The injectables business, primarily located in San Diego, USA, consists of two marketed products, DepoCyt (cytarabine), for a complication of cancer, and Depodur (depo morphine), for the treatment of post-surgical pain, and a pipeline of projects in various stages of development. These include controlled-release injectable formulations of a number of biological products and DepoBupivacaine, a long-acting injectable formulation of the local anesthetic bupivacaine, for the control of post-operative pain. DepoBupivacaine has completed Phase II development and will commence Phase III trials shortly. It has been licensed to Mundipharma for all territories outside North America and Japan and to Maruho for Japan.