Novo Nordisk announced that it has agreed to acquire Cardior Pharmaceuticals for up to €1.025 billion (approximately $1.1 billion USD), including an upfront payment and additional payments if certain development and commercial milestones are achieved. The acquisition is an important step forward in Novo Nordisk’s strategy to establish a presence in the cardiovascular disease treatment space.
Cardior Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of RNA-based therapeutics designed to prevent, repair and reverse cardiovascular diseases. Cardior’s therapeutic approach uses distinctive non-coding RNAs as a platform for addressing the root causes of cardiac dysfunctions. Cardior’s lead compound, CDR132L, is currently in phase-2 clinical development for the treatment of heart failure.
Novo Nordisk is a leading global healthcare company founded in 1923 and headquartered in Denmark. Novo Nordisk employs more than 57,100 people in 80 countries and markets its products in approximatly 170 countries.
Novo Nordisk plans to initiate a second phase 2 trial that will investigate CDR132L in a chronic heart failure population with cardiac hypertrophy – a condition that causes the walls of the heart muscle to become thick and stiff, affecting the heart’s ability to pump blood.
The closing of the acquisition is expected to happen in the second quarter of 2024. Novo Nordisk will fund the acquisition from financial reserves. Latham & Watkins LLP, a Los Angeles, California-based law firm, advised Novo Nordisk in the transaction.
According to data captured in the LevinPro HC database, this transaction marks the 45th Biotechnology acquisition of 2024. There were 157 Biotechnology deals announced during 2023, and 141 announced during 2022. Additionally, this marks Novo Nordisk’s sixth healthcare acquisition since 2021. In 2023, the company acquired BIOCORP in June, followed by Inversago Pharma in August and KBP Biosciences‘s ocedurenone in October. Together, Novo Nordisk’s 2023 transactions totaled more than $2.5 billion in disclosed spending.
