OTO-825 was
picked up by Prevail Therapeutics, which is an affiliate of Eil Lilly:
On January 27, 2023, Otonomy entered into an asset purchase agreement with Prevail Therapeutics Inc., an affiliate of Eli Lilly and Company ("Prevail"), pursuant to which Otonomy agreed to sell and assign to Prevail certain patent rights, data, know-how, regulatory filings, inventory and contracts in connection with Otonomy's GJB2 gene therapy product, OTO-825. In exchange for assigning these assets to Prevail, Prevail agreed to pay Otonomy a one-time payment of five million dollars ($5,000,000). Prevail further agreed to assume certain liabilities of Otonomy related to the transferred assets. The parties agreed that, among other things, filing a Certificate of Dissolution with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware is a closing condition of this asset purchase agreement. On January 27, 2023, Otonomy also agreed to terminate its collaboration agreement with Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation ("AGTC") related to OTO-825 and to acquire AGTC's rights in certain data, know-how, patent rights and inventory, which will be included in the assets Otonomy has agreed to assign to Prevail. The termination of the collaboration agreement with AGTC and AGTC's assignment of certain assets to Otonomy will become effective immediately prior to the closing of the asset purchase agreement between Otonomy and Prevail and in consideration for such termination and assignment by AGTC, Otonomy has agreed to make a one-time payment to AGTC of approximately one million one hundred fifty thousand dollars ($1,150,000) on the closing of the asset purchase agreement between Otonomy and Prevail.
OTO-825 was originally a partnered program between Otonomy and AGTC, but apparently now it's going to solely under Eli Lilly. What makes this very interesting is that Eli Lilly bought
Akouos a few months ago. Akouos is a small gene therapy hearing biotech, and they are working on their own drug which would be a competitor to OTO-825.
The parts of Otonomy's pipeline that weren't picked up were OTO-313 (tinnitus) and OTO-6XX (hair cell regeneration/repair). I'm a little surprised by OTO-6XX, but now I wonder if they just didn't have anything substantial after the hair cell regeneration stuff fell apart.