CoCensys Joins Forces With Irvine Firm : Partnership: Company will share its management expertise and have the option to acquire Acea Pharmaceuticals.
CoCensys, a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for epilepsy and anxiety disorders, has formed an unusual partnership with another start-up firm as part of its plan to expand its product line.
In exchange for access to the expertise of CoCensys’ senior managers, CoCensys has the option to acquire Acea Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Irvine for 2 million shares of CoCensys stock any time in the next two years.
The Acea arrangement is the first under CoCensys’ new “associate program” through which it plans to provide management and technical support to companies doing research in areas with biopharmaceutical promise.
The advantage to CoCensys is that it would gain a proprietary interest in new products coming out of research firms such as Acea without having to put money up front. The advantage to companies such as Acea is that they can use 100% of their funding for scientific development without spending money for management, which CoCensys provides, said Daniel Korpolinski, chief executive of CoCensys.
Acea was co-founded by CoCensys Chairman Robert G. McNeil and two others: Kelvin Gee, chief scientific officer at CoCensys, and Eckard Weber, professor of pharmacology at UC Irvine. Weber and colleague John Keana, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon in Eugene, have discovered a compound that interacts with a receptor in the central nervous system believed to be involved in the onset of neurological diseases such as stroke-induced neural damage and grand mal epilepsy.
Founded in 1989, CoCensys is focusing on identifying receptors in the body’s central nervous system and compounds that fit those receptors. One of its products, a prototype of a class of chemicals called epalons, is being tested in human clinical trials for use as a sleep inducer.
The company has 34 employees at its Irvine research facility and anticipates 16 to 20 more in the next six months.
