Incara Pharmaceuticals and Indevus Pharmaceuticals of Lexington, MA, are outlicensing the beta-blocker bucindolol to ARCA Discovery of Aurora, CO.
Bucindolol was previously under development by RTP-based Incara for the treatment of heart failure, but development was discontinued in 1999.
Commercial rights to bucindolol are now owned by CPEC LLC, a limited liability company jointly owned by Incara and Indevus. Terms of the license call for future royalty and milestone payments to CPEC upon the development of bucindolol.
In July of 1999, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health, terminated the Phase III heart failure study of bucindolol earlier than scheduled.
ARCA and its academic collaborators have reexamined the clinical trial data and have identified a genetic marker that it says correlates with patients who did not respond to bucindolol. ARCA believes that bucindolol’s pharmacology is suitable for therapy of most heart failure patients who do not exhibit this genetic marker.
Incara: www.incara.com
