Evonik, a CDMO that focuses on specialty chemicals, has been enlisted by Takeda spinoff Phathom Pharmaceuticals to manufacture its recently FDA-approved gastrointestinal drug vonoprazan.
Evonik will produce the treatment at its facilities in Indiana and Germany, the company said. Back in May, Phathom's vonoprazan won FDA approval as one component in two separate combinations to treat Helicobacter pylori infection.
The companies didn't disclose financial terms of the deal.
“The manufacture of vonoprazan requires multi-step syntheses involving complex chemistries (and) we are delighted to be able to bring the right mix of technologies and assets to this collaboration," Thomas Riermeier, the head of Evonik’s healthcare division, said in a press release.
Evonik boasts a suite of drug delivery systems designed to target the lower small intestine and colon as well as technology that can deploy drugs to the upper small intestine. The company’s expertise in heterogeneous catalysis was fundamental to achieving high efficiency and purity of the API used in vonoprazan, it said in the release.
One of Phathom’s approved combinations pairs vonoprazan, a novel potassium-competitive acid blocker, with the antibiotic amoxicillin in Voquezna Dual Pak. The regimen further adds clarithromycin in a triplet dubbed Voquezna Triple Pak.
Apart from the approvals earlier this year, Phathom inked a financing deal of up to $260 million to support the drug’s launch and its continued clinical development, including in non-erosive reflux disease, which could open up a much larger market.