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Nektar Therapeutics
Nektar Therapeutics is an American biopharmaceutical company. The company was founded in 1990 and is based in San Francisco, California.[2] The company develops new drug candidates by applying its proprietary PEGylation and advanced polymer conjugate technologies to modify chemical structure of substances[3], which improves drug characteristics like retention and solubility.[4] It is a technology supplier to a number of pharmaceutical companies including Affymax, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer and UCB Pharma, etc.[2] The company developed the world's first inhalable non-injectable insulin, Exubera, which was awarded as the bronze award by Wall Street Journal for its technological breakthrough.[5] BackgroundThe company is engaged in developing a proprietary pipeline of drug candidates for several therapeutic areas including oncology, pain, anti-infectives, anti-viral and immunology.[2] The company's research and development involve in small molecule and biologic drug candidates. Its drug candidate base consists of naloxegol (Movantik), a Phase III oral opioid antagonist, etirinotecan pegol, a topoisomerase inhibitor under Phase III clinical study as of 2012, NKTR 061, NKTR-181, NKTR-214, etc.[6] In 2013, the company was assigned a patent which was developed by the company and other four co-inventors.[7] The products of the company is served as a supplement to improve the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, half-life, bioavailability and other areas of drugs for the patients worldwide.[8] As of March 2014, the company had a market capitalization of $1.7 billion with an enterprise value of $1.67 billion.[1] As of December 2024, at a stock price-per-share of roughly $1, the market cap is roughly $171 million.[9] Nektar underwent periods of downsizing after unsuccessful partnerships were ended with Eli Lilly in 2023 and Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022, resulting in layoffs of most company employees.[4] PipelineEtirinotecan pegol was in the phase III BEACON trial as well as in the I-SPY2 adaptive clinical trial for breast cancer in 2016.[10] The European Medicines Agency refused a marketing authorisation in 2017.[11] Bempegaldesleukin (NKTR-214) is a CD122-biased immune-stimulatory cytokine,[12] Phase I results were announced in November 2016.[13] It is now in a phase 2 trial in combination with nivolumab for various advanced cancers.[14] In 2023 Nektar's partnership with Eli Lilly in development of "rezpeg" was ended. Eli Lilly claimed the drug lacked suitable efficacy, while Nektar responded that Eli Lilly had botched the analysis.[4] References
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