Obesity startup Metsera is getting a new manufacturing partner and a new CEO.
On Tuesday, the well-funded startup announced that it would bring on specialty pharmaceutical and generics manufacturer Amneal to produce its obesity and metabolic disease drugs.
The company also said that Clive Meanwell, the legendary biotech entrepreneur who co-founded Metsera, has transferred his CEO duties to Whit Bernard. Bernard was Metsera’s operating chief and is also a managing partner at Meanwell’s investment firm Population Health Partners. The two had worked together at The Medicines Company, which Novartis bought in 2019 for almost $10 billion.
Meanwell will stay on the New York City-based company’s board and management team, an outside spokesperson for the company said, and no equity stakes will change.
Whit BernardWith huge demand for obesity drugs and limited manufacturing capacity, the ability to actually make and deliver the drugs to patients is becoming a competitive imperative not just for Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which have the drugs on the market, but also for any company with hopes of competing with them.
Bridgewater, NJ-based Amneal will use its current manufacturing network and will build two new facilities in India to help make Metsera‘s injectable and oral drugs, including GLP-1 agonists and amylin receptor agonists, the companies said Tuesday morning.
Metsera came out of stealth this spring with $290 million, a library of 20,000 peptides from its acquisition of UK-based Zihipp, and a licensing pact with South Korea-based D&D Pharmatech to make oral obesity medicines.
Amneal will be Metsera’s “preferred supply partner” in the US and Europe, the companies said, and it will get a license to commercialize the startup’s drugs in certain “emerging markets,” which include India and undisclosed countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Amneal will also build a peptide synthesis facility and a sterile fill-finish unit at a site in India, which will cost the company between $150 million to $200 million over the coming four to five years, it said. Metsera and government incentives will also contribute to the construction costs. Amneal will also help Metsera with drug device development and other manufacturing.
“Amneal is deeply committed to providing access to high-quality, affordable and essential medicines, including those in new categories,” Chirag and Chintu Patel, co-CEOs of Amneal, said in a press release.
Earlier this month, Metsera released Phase 1 data on its lead drug, a potentially once-a-month GLP-1 injectable known as MET-097. The company plans to begin a Phase 2b by the end of this year and could launch a Phase 3 as soon as the second half of 2025, Meanwell told Endpoints News at the time of the data reveal.