Esperion Therapeutics, Inc. is a public American

pharmaceutical company The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate sympto ...

focused on the development of

bempedoic acid Bempedoic acid, sold under the brand name Nexletol among others, is a medication for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia (high blood cholesterol levels). Text was copied from this source which is © European Medicines Agency. Reproduction is a ...

, an orally available small molecule designed to lower elevated levels of

LDL-C Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is one of the five major groups of lipoprotein that transport all fat molecules around the body in extracellular water. These groups, from least dense to most dense, are chylomicrons (aka ULDL by the overall densit ...

. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

History

The first Espirion

The first Esperion was founded in 1998 by Dr. Roger Newton to focus on the in-licensing and development of drugs to modulate HDL cholesterol (HDL-c).

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

acquired the original Esperion in February 2004 for . It's believed this was a defensive move by Pfizer to prevent ETC-216 (apoA-1 Milano, Esperion's lead drug candidate) from falling into competitors' hands. ETC-216 increased the levels of ApoA-1, the major protein in HDL cholesterol (HDL-c), the so-called "good cholesterol". It was believed that raising the levels of ApoA-1 (or HDL-c) in the body would reduce cardiovascular disease risk. At the time,

was the leader in developing a promising new class of drugs known as CETP inhibitors (CETPi). These drugs also raised HDL-c. However, almost 3 years later, in late 2006, Pfizer's CETPi drug (torcetrapib) failed in the final stages of clinical development. Pfizer terminated the development program for torcetrapib and reportedly ended all other cardiovascular drug development programs, including drug development programs for ETC-216 and the other programs acquired from Esperion.

The second Espirion

In May 2008, Dr. Roger Newton, negotiated with Pfizer to acquire the patent estates for two drug candidates (including ETC-1002/bempedoic acid/Nexletol) discovered by the original Esperion team and raised capital from four venture capital firms to found the "new" Esperion. This led to a second independent period for the company, focused almost exclusively on the development of ETC-1002, a drug which lowers the levels of LDL-cholesterol (LDL-c) the so-called "bad cholesterol" and targeted for patients that could not - or would not - take statins (statins are the standard-of-care medicine for lowering levels of bad cholesterol) . In June 2013, Esperion became a public company again through an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

. , Esperion is traded on NASDAQ under the symbol "ESPR".

Products

The company's main products are NEXLIZET (bempedoic acid and ezetimibe) and NEXLETOL (bempedoic acid), the first approved oral, once-daily, non-statin LDL-Cholesterol (LDL-C) lowering combination medicine that is now available in U.S. pharmacies. Further products include NILEMDO (also a ATP Citrate Lyase inhibitor like NEXLETOL) and NUSTENDI (bempedoic acid and ezetimibe like NEXLIZET).

History

The first Espirion

The second Espirion

Products

References

Further reading