Neurocrine Partners With Xenon To Add New Early-Stage Pipeline Assets

I’ve noted before that for all of the positives of the Neurorince Biosciences (NBIX) story, the company has never had an especially dynamic or productive R&D operation when it comes to generating new clinical candidates. With Ingrezza driving the company to profitability and positive free cash flow, management is augmenting its internal R&D efforts by actively looking for licensing and acquisition candidates, and the company announced another such deal earlier this week.

Neurocrine’s agreement with Xenon Pharmaceuticals (XENE) is fairly typical for an early-stage licensing and development agreement. Xenon doesn’t really have the resources to go it alone, and has chosen to partner out certain assets to Neurocrine to better fund other programs, while Neurocrine pays a relatively low entry price for a risky but promising portfolio of compounds for various forms of epilepsy. While the Xenon assets are too early in development to make a meaningful impact on Neurocrine’s valuation, I consider this a worthwhile use of assets for the company and consistent with the strategy management has previously laid out for investors.

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Neurocrine Partners With Xenon To Add New Early-Stage Pipeline Assets