Pharmaceutical companies Lundbeck and Otsuka have formed a global alliance to deliver up to five new psychiatric and neuroscience drugs.

The Danish and Japanese pharma companies, both of which have a strong record in CNS products, have signed a sales and cost share agreement.

The alliance covers two near-term projects from Otsuka and an earlier-stage portfolio of psychiatric disorder treatments, encompassing psychotic, mood and behavioural disorders at all levels of severity, from Lundbeck.

The two companies have identified psychiatric disorders as a major area of unmet need.

Lundbeck is granted co-development and co-commercialisation rights to two Otsuka drugs: aripiprazole depot formulation (which improves compliance in users of the drug) and OPC-34712 (for schizophrenia and major depressive disorder).

Otsuka will have an option to co-develop and co-commercialise up to three early-stage compounds in Lundbeck’s R&D pipeline.

“With the addition of aripiprazole depot formulation and OPC-34712, Lundbeck has significantly broadened its growing psychiatry portfolio with exciting and unique treatments in an area of high unmet needs,” said Ulf Wiinberg, Lundbeck’s President and CEO.

“This collaboration further strengthens our US platform and allows us to be introduced with the US psychiatry community already in 2013."

Dr. Taro Iwamoto, President and Representative Director, Otsuka, commented: “We are very excited that Otsuka and Lundbeck have entered into a co-development and co-commercialisation agreement for aripiprazole depot formulation and OPC-34712, both potential key drivers of future growth for Otsuka’s CNS business.

“Lundbeck’s expertise in developing depression and anxiety treatments and Otsuka’s expertise in developing anti-psychotics will maximise the medical and commercial value of Otsuka’s portfolio in CNS. In addition, our partnership with Lundbeck will enable us to establish a strong platform to deliver these compounds to patients who need them.”

Through the sales and cost share agreement, Otsuka will receive up to US$1.8 billion from Lundbeck – which will see its psychiatry portfolio and US market penetration increase.

The combination of Otsuka’s strong presence in North America and Asia with Lundbeck’s strong presence in Europe, Canada and Latin America mean that the alliance will reach most of the global psychiatric market.

MedX Health’s skin imaging diagnostic systems, MoleMate and SIMSYS, have been granted FDA approval for sale in the US.

These non-invasive medical technologies use light to look beneath suspicious moles, creating accurate images to help physicians evaluate lesions, often eliminating the need for painful and expensive skin biopsies.

Steve Guillen, President and CEO of MedX Health, said: “The US market alone is estimated to be a $1 billion opportunity, and MoleMate and SIMSYS are the only FDA approved and patent protected siascopy products in this important health segment.”

MoleMate features a hand-held scanner designed for office use, providing images of the pigment, blood, and collagen below the mole or lesion.

SIMSYS allows image capture and storage as well as special features that can be used to compare moles. It will support ‘mole mapping’ in 2012, where the entire surface of the patient's skin is photographed to observe changes over time, so that suspicious moles can be monitored more closely.

Dr. R. H. Falcon, a dermatologist in New York, said: “I chose this technology because it gives me extra information about my patients’ suspicious moles and lesions through the additional views of the skin and helps me and the patients to come to a more informed decision about removal.”

Almost 13 million people in the US have a history of non-melanoma skin cancer, usually diagnosed as basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma. The survival rate for patients whose melanoma is detected early is about 99%. This statistic falls to 15% for patients with advanced disease.

The MoleMate and SIMSYS medical technologies are already available in Australia, Europe and the UK.