Ventrus Biosciences And Assembly Pharmaceuticals Merge
Ventrus Biosciences announced it has entered into a merger agreement with Assembly Pharmaceuticals. The merger will result in the combined firms being renamed as Assembly Biosciences, Inc.
Under the terms of the agreement, Assembly stockholders will receive around 23 million shares from Ventrus. The transaction is expected to be completed by July 10, 2014 subject to approval of Ventrus stockholders.
After the merger is completed, the new company will start developing Assembly’s new, first-in-class small molecules for the treatment and possible cure of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
Hepatitis B virus infection is a global epidemic chronically affecting more than 350 million people around the world. The disease has no cure and claims more than 600,000 lives every year through HBV-related causes. Existing treatments suppress infection but require lifelong therapy for patients since less than 10 percent of infections are cured at present.
Assembly has discovered a series of HBV Core Protein Allosteric Modulators (CpAMs), which has shown preclinical proof of principle with meaningful reductions in the HBV ‘S’ antigen in in vitro experiments. The CpAMs work on the function of intra-nuclear covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) to reduce viral load. cccDNA are responsible for creating a virus and enable it to survive. CpAMs also decrease the load of key viral antigens HBV “S” antigen (HBsAg) and HBV “E” antigen (HBeAg). Reduction of these viral antigens, and HBsAg in particular, is considered to be the best marker of a functional cure and will be used as a key clinical endpoint in development.
Dr. Russell Ellison, CEO and Chairman of Ventrus, said, “We believe combining the Ventrus and Assembly management teams, resources, and programs, will create a robust biopharmaceutical company with the capabilities to develop and commercialize this first-in-class curative approach to an underserved disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people worldwide.”
“Our board and management team believe that by joining with Ventrus, we can accelerate the creation of shareholder value as well as the timeline for development of our much-needed HBV therapeutics. We enthusiastically embraced this opportunity after carefully assessing multiple other attractive proposals to advance Assembly to the next stage,” said Derek Small, Chairman and CEO of Assembly.