Novartis
NEWS
Novartis was among the most prolific pharma dealmakers in 2024, a trend that it expects to continue with more bolt-on deals this year to set up for sustainable long-term growth.
The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference started off with a flurry of deals that reinvigorated excitement across the biopharma industry. Johnson & Johnson moved to acquire Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion, breaking a dealmaking barrier that kept Big Pharma’s 2024 biotech buyouts to under $5 billion.
Novartis is locked in a legal back-and-forth with MSN Pharma over alleged patent infringement of its heart failure drug Entresto.
The closures follow Novartis’s acquisition of MorphoSys earlier this year.
The report comes just two days after Novartis announced its own Parkinson’s drug failure.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review flagged five drugs whose prices were raised in 2023 with no evidence to support it. Meanwhile, the makers of these drugs have been reporting double-digit sales growth for many of these products.
Pfizer, facing increasing pressure from Novartis, is touting a Phase III win for Ibrance as the first clinical evidence supporting the CDK4/6 inhibitor class’ use in patients with a specific type of breast cancer.
By far, the largest acquisition of 2024 was Novo Holdings’ yet-to-be-closed buyout of manufacturer Catalent at $16.5 billion. Outside of that, the leading pharmaceutical companies kept to less than $5 billion per deal.
Novartis is seeking to prevent the entry of generics for its blockbuster heart failure drug Entresto, its top-selling asset that brought in more than $6 billion in net global sales last year.
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