Note 1 - Company Overview

9 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2014

Disclosure Text Block [Abstract]

Nature of Operations [Text Block]

(1)     Company Overview

Biota Pharmaceuticals, Inc., together with its wholly owned subsidiaries (“Biota”, or the “Company”) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of products to prevent and treat serious and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. The Company was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 1969 and its corporate headquarters are located in Alpharetta, Georgia.

The Company is currently focused on developing oral, small molecule compounds to treat a number of respiratory-related infections. The most advanced clinical-stage program is laninamivir octanoate, a long-acting neuraminidase inhibitor (“NI”) that the Company is developing for the treatment of influenza A and B. The Company recently completed enrolling patients in a multi-national Phase 2 trial for laninamivir octanoate, which the Company refers to as (“IGLOO”). The Company also has a Phase 2 compound, vapendavir, which is in clinical development for the treatment of human rhinovirus (“HRV”) infections in patients with asthma. In addition to these clinical-stage development programs, the Company is also developing orally bioavailable compounds for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (“RSV”) infections in children, the elderly and immune-compromised patients.

The Company previously developed zanamivir, a NI that is marketed worldwide by GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”) as Relenza^® for the prevention and treatment of influenza A and B. GSK developed and markets Relenza^® pursuant to a royalty-bearing research and license agreement with the Company entered into in 1990. In 2003, the Company entered into a collaboration and license agreement with Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited (“Daiichi Sankyo”), under which each party cross-licensed its intellectual property related to second-generation long acting NI’s, including FLUNET and laninamivir octanoate. In 2009, the Company entered into a separate commercialization agreement with Daiichi Sankyo, which provided Daiichi Sankyo an exclusive license to commercialize laninamivir octanoate in Japan and entitled the Company to a royalty on net sales of laninamivir octanoate in Japan. In September 2010, laninamivir octanoate was approved for sale by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare for the treatment of influenza A and B in adults and children and, in December 2013, it was also approved for the prevention of influenza A and B in Japan. Laninamivir octanoate is marketed in Japan by Daiichi Sankyo as Inavir^®. In 2009, the Company filed an Investigational New Drug application (“IND”) with the United States Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to develop laninamivir octanoate in the United States. In 2011, the Company was awarded a contract from the U.S. Office of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (“BARDA”) designed to provide up to $231 million in support of the development of and submission for a New Drug Application (“NDA”) of laninamivir octanoate for the treatment of influenza A and B infections in the United States.

On May 7, 2014 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (“ASPR”) and BARDA notified the Company of its decision to terminate the contract for the development of laninamivir octanoate for the convenience of the U.S. government. The decision to terminate for convenience was the result of a recently concluded In-Process Review (“IPR”).

Although several of the Company’s influenza product candidates have been successfully developed and commercialized by other larger pharmaceutical companies under collaboration, license or commercialization agreements with the Company to-date, the Company has not independently developed or received regulatory approval for any product candidate and the Company does not currently have any sales, marketing or commercial capabilities. Therefore, it is possible that the Company may not successfully derive any significant product revenues from its existing or future development-stage influenza or other product candidates that it is developing now, or may develop in the future. The Company expects to incur annual losses for the foreseeable future as it intends to support the clinical and preclinical development of its product candidates.