Otsuka Pharma and Click Therapeutics enter partnership poised to transform mental healthcare

Otsu­ka, Click Ther­a­peu­tics part­ner to cre­ate ther­a­py for men­tal ill­ness (Ver­dict Med­ical Devices):

“Otsu­ka Pharmaceutical’s US divi­sion Otsu­ka Amer­i­ca has part­nered with Click Ther­a­peu­tics to devel­op and com­mer­cialise a pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for treat­ing major depres­sive dis­or­der (MDD).

Click Ther­a­peu­tics offers soft­ware as pre­scrip­tion med­ical treat­ments for peo­ple with unmet med­ical needs.

Under the part­ner­ship, Click Ther­a­peu­tics will con­tribute through its exper­tise in dis­cov­er­ing and val­i­dat­ing a soft­ware appli­ca­tion as well as its com­mer­cial deployment.

Otsu­ka will work with its exper­tise in the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of approved pre­scrip­tion ther­a­pies for patients with seri­ous men­tal illnesses.

Otsu­ka Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal North Amer­i­can phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness pres­i­dent and CEO Kabir Nath said “Our goal is to deliv­er evi­dence-based cog­ni­tive ther­a­pies to a broad­er pop­u­la­tion of patients with MDD than is cur­rent­ly fea­si­ble, due to the chal­lenges of a short­age of men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als and lim­it­ed time for them to con­duct cog­ni­tive therapy.”

The Partnership:

Otsu­ka and Click Ther­a­peu­tics Col­lab­o­rate to Devel­op and Com­mer­cial­ize Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics for Patients with Major Depres­sive Dis­or­der (press release):

Otsu­ka has agreed to com­mit cap­i­tal to ful­ly fund devel­op­ment of Click’s nov­el mobile appli­ca­tion ‘CT-152’ for MDD, and to com­mer­cial­ize this appli­ca­tion world-wide upon achieve­ment of reg­u­la­to­ry approvals. Otsu­ka will pay Click up to $10 mil­lion in upfront and reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stone pay­ments, along with an esti­mat­ed $20 mil­lion in devel­op­ment fund­ing. An addi­tion­al $272 mil­lion in com­mer­cial mile­stone pay­ments are con­tin­gent upon reg­u­la­to­ry approvals. In addi­tion, Click will receive tiered, dou­ble-dig­it roy­al­ties on glob­al sales of the soft­ware and the dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic appli­ca­tions that result … The intent is that the app will be clas­si­fied as Soft­ware as a Med­ical Device (SaMD) and will fall under the FDA reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that sup­ports inno­va­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of dig­i­tal tools while pro­tect­ing patient health.

The Partnership in Context: