Servier has ended its collaboration on a prospective new cancer treatment and will return abexinostat’s global development and commercialisation rights to Pharmacyclics.
A pan-HDAC inhibitor, abexinostat is currently in phase II clinical trials for B-cell lymphoma and had been thought to have potential in other cancers.
Bob Duggan, chairman and CEO at Pharmacyclics, said: “Now that we have full ownership of the abexinostat asset, we will enter a period of further evaluation to determine its usefulness in oncology.”
A provisional patent application for abexinostat tosylate was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2013.
Pharmacyclics said it would now evaluate the opportunities that remain with the compound and would provide an update on the programme in mid 2015.