Novartis, Cytos terminate licensing agreement for smoking-cessation drug

SCHLIEREN, Switzerland — Cytos Biotechnology will regain rights to an experimental vaccine against nicotine addiction that it had licensed to Novartis, Cytos said Wednesday.

The company said that Novartis would discontinue the project, known as NIC002. Cytos granted Novartis a license for NIC002 in 2007, but phase-2 trial results in October 2009 indicated that the vaccine spurred the development of nicotine-specific antibodies in patients, but did not increase smoking cessation.

The companies will continue collaborating on the development of CAD106, a treatment for patients with Alzheimer's disease.

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