Purdue Pharma Forges Agreement With Alivio Therapeutics to Advance a Non-Opioid Pain Therapy

After becoming the poster company of the opioid crisis in America for its aggressive marketing efforts of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma continues to make strides to move away from opioids for pain treatment. Today, it forged a partnership with Boston-based Alivio Therapeutics to support that quest. Connecticut-based Purdue struck a deal worth up to about $300 million with Alivio, an affiliate of PureTech Health, to use that company’s inflammation-targeting technology to develop a non-opioid pain treatment for patients with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS). The partnership centers on Alivio’s asset, ALV-107, which has demonstrated proof-of-concept in 10 different preclinical models of inflammation. One of the preclinical models was a validated pre-clinical model for the treatment of IC/BPS. ALV-107relieved pain at all study time points post-therapy, the companies said this morning.
Alivio’s inflammation-targeting technology is designed to enable therapeutics such as small molecules, biologics, and nucleic acids to act exclusively at sites of inflammation based on the degree of inflammation in the tissue while sparing healthy tissue. This approach is being evaluated by Alivio internally across a variety of inflammatory diseases, including IC/BPS, pouchitis, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). IC/BPS is a chronic bladder condition that consists of discomfort or pain in the bladder or surrounding pelvic region and is often associated with frequent urination. It is estimated to affect up to 12 million people in the U.S. and is more common in women than men. Current treatments fail to control pain in many patients.