Last week, shares of drugmaker Biosante Pharmaceuticals (AMEX:BPA) were up 8% after the company announced that it had signed a drug development deal with a tiny European pharma, Pantarhei.

The deal Biosante signed will bring in a measly $1 million in return for the development of an oral contraceptive pill. Biosante didn't announce the total size of the deal, which means it must be extremely small in value. Of course, Biosante wasted little time in the press release mentioning that the oral contraceptive market in the U.S. was $3 billion last year, but forgot to talk about what sort of advantages its potential contraceptive compound will have that will allow it to compete effectively in this market.

There's not much that I like about Biosante. The one compound it can claim to have brought to market, hormone therapy Elestrin, faces numerous branded and generic challengers. This will probably stunt marketing partner Bradley Pharmaceuticals' (NYSE:BDY) sales in the low millions of dollars at most and mean minimal royalty payments to Biosante (my estimate: less than a million dollars annually).

Getting to its hormone gel Libigel, Biosante likes to talk about the need for a compound to treat female sexual dysfunction (FSD). But even if Biosante is somehow able to find the millions of dollars to run long-term clinical trials for this compound and become the first drug developer to bring a treatment for FSD to market in the U.S., Libigel will face the same sort of generic hormone therapy challengers that Elestrin will, since there will be nothing to stop doctors from prescribing generic versions of similar compounds to treat FSD.

Some drug companies like Biosante have long been big on promises and short on results. The company has discussed its vaccine adjuvants and nanoparticle technology in development, but little progress has ever come to pass. This latest deal with this little-known European pharma is just more of the same for Biosante.

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Fool contributor Brian Lawler does not own shares of any company mentioned in this article. The Fool has a disclosure policy.