Lundbeck leaves Trintellix to partner Takeda in the US, opting for royalties as it focuses efforts on Rexulti

The end of an era is nearing for Lundbeck. After a 17-year collaboration with Takeda on depression drug Trintellix, the Danish drugmaker is passing over its U.S. rights to its partner.

Effective January 1 of next year, Lundbeck will collect only royalties on the med in the U.S. market after switching from their current arrangement, which features shared promotion efforts, costs and revenues as well as royalties.

Ending promotional efforts for Trintellix in the U.S. will allow Lundbeck to “fully reallocate” resources to support “other growth opportunities,” including antipsychotic Rexulti, Lundbeck said in a release. With two years left until Trintellix loses U.S. patent protection at the end of 2026, Lundbeck will receive a fixed, undisclosed royalty rate based on net U.S. sales in 2025 and 2026.

The writing was on the wall for Lundbeck’s pivot to a Rexulti focus. Last year, the Otsuka-partnered med overtook Trintellix as Lundbeck’s top brand by sales with a yearly haul of 4.5 billion DKK ($653 million), surpassing Trintellix’s 4.3 billion ($624 million). 

With a clutch of indications across the mental health sphere including in schizophrenia, major depression and most recently Alzheimer’s disease dementia-related agitation—plus patent exclusivity that extends through 2029—Lundbeck is putting much of its weight behind the drug’s growth, especially in the U.S.

In an interview with Fierce Pharma earlier this year, Lundbeck CEO Charl van Zyl spoke of the company's “significant investments” in Rexulti, highlighting specifically direct-to-consumer ads in the U.S.

The helmsman further outlined his plan for the company’s long-term growth in a presentation at 2024’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, identifying Lundbeck's “focused innovator” strategy. The updated Trintellix agreement falls in line with the company's goal of creating financial flexibility through re-focused capital allocation.

Through 2026, the company will focus on growing its strategic brands before scaling up in 2027 through 2029 with partnerships and other efforts, with an aim of becoming an “industry-leading” neuroscience research platform in 2030 and beyond.

Even so, Lundbeck’s exit from U.S. Trintellix commercialization duties comes after more than a decade of building up the brand. Takeda first signed on in 2007 to jointly develop and commercialize two of Lundbeck’s pipeline candidates in the U.S. and Japan, working on Trintellix and another candidate that was scrapped in 2016. 

Trintellix won FDA approval in 2013 under a prior brand name, but it was rebranded in 2016. Outside of the U.S., the med is still sold as Brintellix.