A company that makes prescription digital therapeutics and a pharmaceutical company have formed a partnership that will explore developing digital therapeutics for patients with gastrointestinal diseases.
Boston-based Pear Therapeutics said Wednesday it had entered an agreement with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals to evaluate prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) to treat what it called selected gastrointestinal indications. The partnership, they said, would use Pear’s PDT capabilities and Ironwood’s gastrointestinal franchise. In an emailed statement provided by a spokesperson, Pear CEO Corey McCann wrote that the company would not be disclosing additional details, such as which indications are being targeted. .
“This agreement represents an attractive opportunity to develop first-in-class products that could help patients with GI diseases reach better outcomes,” Ironwood President Tom McCourt said in a statement. “At Ironwood, we are committed to helping patients with GI diseases and are excited about exploring the potential of this innovative new treatment modality.”
For its part, Pear said the partnership would enable it to broaden its pipeline to diseases outside the central nervous system – which has been its primary focus – and into a range of chronic conditions. Pear’s products include reSET, a 90-day PDT for substance use disorder designed to provide cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as reSET-O, an 84-day PDT for opioid use disorder. It also has PearConnect, a patient service center for PDTs.
Boston-based Ironwood’s marketed product is Linzess (linaclotide), which originally received Food and Drug Administration approval in 2012 and is indicated for irritable bowel syndrome and chronic idiopathic constipation. The company markets the drug with Allergan, which Chicago-based AbbVie said in June it would acquire for $63 billion. Ironwood’s pipeline includes IW-3718, in development for gastroestophageal reflux disease, for which Phase III results are expected in the second half of next year, as well as MD-7246, which is in Phase II development for abdominal pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea.
The question of how valuable such partnerships between digital therapeutics and pharmaceuticals can be was the subject of a panel discussion at last month’s DTx East conference in Boston that included executives from Sanofi, Sandoz, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals and MedSafe. Some panelists were of the view that such partnerships represent an opportunity worth billions of dollars, though others were skeptical.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
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