BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Dry eye payday

Competitive bidding for dry eye play SARcode yields payday for VCs

April 1, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

With positive Phase III results for dry eye, SARcode Bioscience Inc. was thinking through the NDA process as well as the commercial launch of its lifitegrast. But a competitive bidding process that led to last week's acquisition by Shire plc (LSE:SHP; NASDAQ:SHPG) led the biotech and its investors to take the bird in hand.

Lifitegrast (SAR 1118) is an eye drop formulation of a small molecule LFA-1 (CD11a-CD18) antagonist...