Johnson & Johnson is moving out from the diabetes business and sold its Calibra product (marketed as OneTouch Via, but never launched) to a 10-year-old company named CeQur, which was already working on a similar insulin-delivery wearable. The terms and conditions of this deal have not yet been yet disclosed, but CeQur has attained an exclusive worldwide license for this technology.

Jay Warner, CeQur’s SVP of commercialization said, “They’re divesting out of the diabetes market and that’s what led us to seek out this asset; We knew they had Calibra in their portfolio and we knew it matched well with our product. And so we decided to go after it.”

Jay Warner stated, “Some people with Type 1 have to change their basal rate daily, [for instance] because they exercise one day and not another day. If you’re altering your basal rate the PAQ isn’t right for you because the PAQ has a fixed basal rate. So for that population, the Calibra product’s ideal; Calibra also adds a simpler transition. There are 3 million people on basal alone and many of those people really need to be on basal-bolus, but they’re avoiding it because they don’t want to inject in public, they don’t want to go into what they call the ‘second injection burden.' And that’s where Calibra is a great way to start patients on a product.”

Robert Farra, CEO of CeQur, said “During mealtime, the patient is able to actuate the buttons to release what we call a bolus injection of insulin. So very discretely, very simply, every time they press the button they get a two-unit insulin dose; A person can do that when they’re among friends, at work, at a restaurant, in a conference room. It really doesn’t matter. They don’t have to excuse themselves and go into a private location to receive their bolus dose of insulin. It happens very discretely and that’s one of the key advantages of our product.”

CeQur plans to introduce its Calibra product with a new brand name in the second quarter of 2019.