SWK Holdings' Enteris BioPharma Gets $2.5 Mln Milestone Payment From Cara Therapeutics

(RTTNews) - SWK Holdings Corp. (SWKH), a specialty finance company focused on life sciences, said Thursday that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Enteris BioPharma, received a second milestone payment of $2.5 million from Cara Therapeutics (CARA).

The milestone payment is related to the license agreement for Peptelligence oral formulation technology utilized in Oral KORSUVA, the oral formulation of Cara's first-in-class KOR agonist, CR845/difelikefalin.

SWK Holdings noted that it is entitled to receive $1.5 million of this milestone payment according to the contractual splits agreed to in the Enteris acquisition agreement. This milestone payment follows an earlier milestone payment of $2.5 million received in October, of which SWK Holdings received $1.5 million.

SWK Holdings is eligible to receive additional potential milestone payments over upcoming quarters, subject to the achievement of certain development milestones for Oral KORSUVA.

In August 2019, Enteris and Cara entered into a licensing agreement whereby Enteris granted to Cara a non-exclusive, royalty-bearing license to the Peptelligence technology to develop, manufacture and commercialize Oral KORSUVA worldwide, excluding Japan and South Korea.

Enteris is eligible to receive milestone payments upon the successful achievement of certain development, regulatory and commercial milestones and low single-digit royalties based on net sales in the licensed territory. Oral KORSUVA was manufactured using Enteris' Peptelligence technology, which is designed to enable the oral delivery of peptides and BCS class II, III and IV small molecules.

Oral KORSUVA is currently the subject of three separate late-stage clinical trials for pruritus in patients with hepatic impairment due to primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), stage III-V chronic kidney disease (CKD), and atopic dermatitis (AD).

In December 2019, Cara announced positive top-line results from its Phase 2 clinical trial of Oral KORSUVA for the treatment of pruritus in patients with stage III-IV (moderate-to-severe) chronic kidney disease.

Cara has said it plans to complete an End of Phase 2 Meeting with the FDA in the first quarter of 2021 and initiate the safety portion of the Phase 3 program in the fourth quarter of 2020.