UCB buys Engage for $270 million, and Staccato Alprazolam, an emergency drug for oral inhalation epilepsy

Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB will buy Us company Engage Therapeutics and its epilepsy drug Staccato Alprazolam for $270 millionAccording to the UCB, Staccato Alprazolam is a small hand-held oral inhalation epilepsy emergency therapy that could become the first on-demand, one-in-one inhalation, by rapidly atomizing high doses of apurquinon and delivering the drug to the lungs, which can quickly end active seizures", and may be used in all 30 to 30 percent of epilepsy patientsStaccato Inhalers (Photo: Engage Therapeutics) It takes 15 minutes for the two epileptic spray therapies currently on the market to work, meaning it's not enough to stop the seizures that have already startedThe StATES results, a Phase 2b trial reported by Engage earlier this year, showed that 66% of patients who received the drug as an active first aid treatment controlled symptoms within two minutes and did not relapse within two hoursOnly 43 percent of patients in the placebo group achieved this effect, suggesting that the differencebetween between the two groups was statistically significant, the data were presented in April at the virtual American Congress of NeurologyStaccato inhalers have entered the U.Sand European markets as an integral part of Alexza Adasupin for acute treatment of agitation associated with adult schizophrenia or bipolar disorder