SkyePharma to Sell Its San Diego Division

By Penni Crabtree, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Feb. 4–SkyePharma, a British drug company, has put its San Diego-based drug development and manufacturing unit up for sale.

The unit, which employs about 113 people and includes a manufacturing facility in the Torrey Pines area, makes injectable drugs DepoCyt, which treats a complication of cancer, and DepoDur, a sustained-release injectable morphine for the treatment of pain.

The San Diego unit is the former DepoTech Corp., which SkyePharma acquired in 1999. The unit develops controlled-release drugs based on a delivery system dubbed DepoFoam.

DepoFoam is a lipid foam that encapsulates a drug that, when injected, is released over a period of as long as several months.

SkyePharma officials in San Diego and New York did not return telephone calls seeking comment yesterday.

The drug company said in a press release Thursday that the sale of its San Diego injectables business, which includes an experimental product called DepoBupivacaine, will allow SkyePharma to focus on its core oral drug and pulmonary businesses.

“A substantial investment in clinical development would be required to maximize the potential of DepoBupivacaine and of the biologicals pipeline,” SkyePharma said in a press release. “This investment, together with the associated investment in manufacturing capacity, would not only place a significant burden on the company’s current resources but also impact the company’s profitability for several years.”

SkyePharma has pursued a sale of some or all of its assets since November, when it hired advisers to field potential offers to buy the company. SkyePharma announced last month that there were no offers for the whole company that the board could recommend to shareholders.

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