Brickell Bio sells off rights to excessive-sweating drug for $9M upfront

BOULDER —  Brickell Biotech Inc. (Nasdaq: BBI), a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company that’s developing a gel to treat excessive sweating and has struggled to maintain a stock price high enough to keep its Nasdaq listing, has sold the rights to its sofpironium bromide drug for a $9 million upfront payment and other considerations. 

Buyer Botanix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. has also pledged to make “additional success-based regulatory and sales milestone payments of up to $168 million and tiered earn out payments ranging from high-single digits to mid-teen digits on net sales of sofpironium bromide gel,” according to a Brickell release. 

That could be quite a boost for Brickell, which recorded only $104,000 in sales during the fourth quarter of 2021.

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“We are pleased to announce the closing of this transaction with Botanix, whose established leadership team has a strong track record of gaining FDA approval for, and successfully commercializing, some of the leading brands in medical dermatology and aesthetic medicine,” Brickell CEO Robert Brown said in a prepared statement. “This deal allows us to start unlocking the value of sofpironium bromide by providing an optimal pathway for sofpironium bromide gel to become a potential best-in-class treatment for the millions of patients suffering from primary axillary hyperhidrosis without the significant investment for commercialization required on our part.”

Botanix will now take over commercialization of sofpironium bromide, and Brickell will shift its focus to developing novel therapeutics in the immunology and inflammatory fields, the company said.

“Accordingly, we intend to invest the proceeds and potential future economics from this sale to continue advancing our exciting pipeline of novel, potential first-in-class therapies,” Brown said. “This includes conducting a first-in-human Phase 1 clinical study that is on track to start this quarter for our lead DYRK1A inhibitor, BBI-02, and progressing the development of our lead STING inhibitor, BBI-10, and other next-generation kinase inhibitors through early preclinical stage studies in 2022.”

The sale sparked some optimism among investors as Brickell’s stock rose by more than 8% in early trading to 25 cents. Still, that’s a far cry from the $1 baseline necessary to remain listed on the Nasdaq exchange.