Deals
As we near the end of second quarter of 2024, the initial public offerings among biotechs have slowed, but the market is still going strong.
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On the sidelines of BIO2025, Julie Gilmore, head of Lilly Gateway Labs, shares her thoughts on the $1.3 billion Verve Therapeutics buy, where Lilly’s therapeutic puck is potentially going and how the company is leveraging its unprecedented success in obesity to support young biotechs.
BioNTech said in 2022 that it faced “threats of a groundless patent infringement suit” from a company that was “unable to bring to market any product to help in the fight against COVID-19.” Now, the mRNA biotech is buying that very company.
Sanofi paid a more than 300% premium on its acquisition of Vigil Neuroscience, suggesting a fierce battle to seal the deal. Across biopharma, companies are sometimes willing to put it all on the line for the right buyout. Novartis’ recent acquisition of Regulus for $800 million upfront provides a case study.
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The companies have received all required regulatory approvals to complete the deal, the largest for the sector in the past three years and the biggest for the hot antibody-drug conjugate market.
With the acquisition, AstraZeneca will gain access to Icosavax’s investigational combination vaccine IVX-A12, which is being developed for respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus in older adults.
Friday’s FDA approval of Vertex-CRISPR’s Casgevy and bluebird bio’s Lyfgenia has immediately revealed startling differences between these two gene therapies: price and a black-box warning.
The deal, announced late Wednesday, will provide AbbVie with access to Cerevel Therapeutics’ pipeline of clinical-stage and preclinical candidates for psychiatric and neurological diseases.
This week we discuss ups and downs in the weight loss and ADC markets - including Altimmune, Pfizer setbacks, AbbVie’s ImmunoGen buy and more.
The acquisition will give Roche access to Carmot’s clinical portfolio of three GLP-1 receptor agonists, placing it squarely in the middle of the competition to treat overweight and obesity.
AbbVie’s $10.1 billion ImmunoGen buy and Altimmune’s Phase II win demonstrate that the antibody-drug conjugate market is red hot in cancer and GLP-1 drugs for weight loss are an absolute craze.
Facing the loss of Humira revenues from biosimilar competition, AbbVie is looking to grow its pipeline by acquiring ImmunoGen and its antibody-drug conjugate Elahere, which was granted FDA accelerated approval last year.
This week on The Weekly we talk struggles with GLP-1 drug shortages and what that might mean for Novo and Lilly competitors; Regeneron and Sanofi positive results for Dupixent in COPD. Plus, Merck buys Caraway, Beigene’s deal with Ensem, ups and downs for Flagship.
The buy brings three small molecules in preclinical development for Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and lysosomal storage diseases into Merck’s pipeline.