Fovea Pharmaceuticals to sell 100% of its share to Sanofi-Aventis

Fovea Pharmaceuticals announced today that it has entered into a binding agreement with sanofi-aventis to sell 100% of its share to sanofi-aventis. Fovea has a portfolio of three clinical compounds, a unique technology platform and several discovery programs dedicated to back of the eye diseases. The deal is valued to a total of euro 370M, including an immediate upfront payment and subsequent milestone payments related to the progress of the clinical compounds. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur in the 4th quarter of 2009.

Fovea was created in 2005 by Professeur Jose A. Sahel, Bernard Gilly and Pierre Belichard, with the initial seeding of Sofinnova Partners in Paris. It successfully raised two rounds of funding in November 2005 and February 2008, from a syndicate of pan-european investors including Sofinnova Partners, Abingworth Management, Forbion Capital Partners, The Wellcome Trust, GIMV, Credit Agricole Private Equity and Vesalius BioCapital.

Fovea has rapidly built a pipeline of products: FOV 1101, an eye drop, fixed dose combination of prednisolone and cyclosporine, currently in phase II for the treatment of persistent allergic conjunctivitis, FOV 2302, an intravitreal formulation of a plasma kallikrein inhibitor, in phase I for the treatment of Retinal Vein Occlusion induced macular edema and FOV 2304, a potent antagonist of bradykinin B1 receptor, active by eye drop, scheduled to enter in phase I by November 2009 for the treatment of diabetic macular oedema.

"Our team is proud and extremely pleased to join sanofi-aventis, as it will provide the necessary resources and expertise needed to continue to aggressively build the ophthalmology franchise and demonstrate the efficacy of our products through regulatory clinical development," commented Bernard Gilly, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fovea Pharmaceuticals. "It also demonstrates that strong science combined with high level expertise in pharmaceutical development and management is what the industry leaders are looking for."