Cosmo drugmaker hopes dye lures buyer

next month, he said. The product may reach $1.5 billion in sales, said Chris Tanner, Cosmo’s chief financial officer.

High interest

“We have so many companies that have already shown interest in the project that it should be very easy to find a partner,” Ajani said. “If the outcome is

Cosmo Pharmaceuticals, the developer of a dye that may help detect pre-cancerous colon growths, plans to use the product to lure a buyer within the next year, Chief Executive Officer Mauro Ajani said.

More than 10 companies have expressed interest in the dye, called Methylene Blue MMx, and the company expects to start talks before April, Ajani said. The company probably won’t sell rights to the product separately because it would reduce the appeal of the company to a potential acquirer, Ajani said.

“Usually, a pharma company wants to buy when the company that is going to be bought retains the rights,” he said. “What I can tell you for sure, in one year we will understand what our way out will be.”

Cosmo is preparing to test Methylene Blue MMx in the third and final stage of trials usually required for regulatory approval, and plans to seek marketing clearance in the United States and Europe next year, Ajani said. Results from the second stage of tests are expected in the positive, we have a major opportunity to reach an important agreement with a big company.”

Ajani founded Cosmo in 1997, took it public on the Swiss exchange 10 years later and owns 43 percent of the stock. He has an arrangement with other executives that gives him control of 53 percent of the shares, Tanner said.

Cosmo stock has gained 54 percent this year, compared with a 14 percent gain in the Swiss Performance Index. The company has a market value of about $417 million.

Cosmo is testing Methylene Blue MMx as a tablet that patients take before a colonoscopy, the procedure in which surgeons thread a camera through the rectum and colon to look for and remove polyps and lesions, which can become cancerous. About 30 million people will have the procedure this year in the seven largest markets, Ajani said.

Speedier procedure

In most cases, doctors use white light to check for abnormalities in the colon, said Matt Rutter, a consultant gastroenterologist in the United Kingdom. In as much as 5 percent of cases, they use an older form of methylene blue in a spray applied via a catheter that’s inserted with the camera, Rutter said. The process adds about 15 minutes to a standard half-hour procedure, he said.

If it works, Cosmo’s tablet “would speed up the procedure and allow you to focus on detecting the lesions rather than applying the dye,” said Rutter, who’s also a member of the British Society of Gastroenterology committee that sets guidelines for endoscopies in the United Kingdom. He said he has no financial ties to Cosmo.

Currently, doctors only use methylene blue in patients who have a tendency to develop pre-cancerous polyps, or who have bowel inflammation that puts them at risk of cancerous changes, Rutter said. Evidence that Cosmo’s product benefits other groups of patients could expand the usage to as much as 20 percent of cases, he said.