Otsuka Scores Twice in One Week
Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Otsuka Holdings (OTC: OTSKY), announced back-to-back deals in early July, in which it entered a new field, and bolstered one of its existing segments. Otsuka’s research areas are in psychiatric and neurological diseases, hematological cancers, and kidney, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases. On July 11, the company announced its acquisition of ReCor Medical, a portfolio company of Sofinnova Partners, for an undisclosed price. The Palo Alto, California-based medical device company specializes in the treatment of hypertension, a new area for Otsuka. ReCor was founded in 2009 by Sofinnova Partners and Professor Jacques Seguin, MD, who... Read More »
Roche Builds on its Foundation Medicine Deal
Three years after its first investment, Roche AG (SIX: RO) bought the rest of Foundation Medicine, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based molecular information company. In January 2015, Roche plunked down $1.03 billion to acquire approximately 57% of Foundation Medicine from its venture capital backers Google Ventures, Third Rock Ventures and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Roche acquired approximately 15.6 million shares in Foundation at $50 per share. It also invested $250 million by acquiring 5 million newly issued shares at $50 per share. My, how times (and markets) have changed. On June 19, Roche announced it would pay $2.4 billion to buy the shares it didn’t own. The... Read More »
Eli Lilly Doubles Down on Immuno-Oncology
ARMO BioSciences (NASDAQ: ARMO) is a late-stage immuno-oncology company that develops a pipeline of novel, proprietary product candidates designed to activate the immune system of cancer patients to recognize and eradicate tumors. On a trailing 12-month basis, it generated a net loss of $42.4 million. Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) overlooked the loss as it eyed the real prize–the addition of pegilodecakin, a PEGylated IL-10, which has demonstrated clinical benefits as a single agent, and in combination with both chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibitor therapy, across several tumor types. Pegilodecakin is currently being studied in a Phase 3 clinical trial in pancreatic cancer, and... Read More »Takeda Takes on Shire for $81.5 Billion
Big Pharma deals are back, more than ever. After six weeks of offers, refusals, talks and more, Japanese drug giant Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (OTCQB: TKPYY) reached an agreement to acquire Shire plc (NASDAQ: SHPG) for $81.5 billion, including assumed debt of $19.54 billion. It’s the largest healthcare deal announced ever, unless you count Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) hostile stalking of AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) through much of 2014, with bids reported to be around $118 billion. And we don’t. Looking back over past pharmaceutical deals (that closed), this takes the record from Pfizer, which announced its acquisition of Wyeth, Inc. for approximately $78.5 billion, including $10.5 billion... Read More »
Roche Deal for Flatiron Health Builds its Oncology Muscle
Roche (SIX: RO) couldn’t let a good startup slip away. The Swiss drug maker announced it will pay $1.9 billion to keep New York City-based Flatiron Health, Inc. from going public. When it was founded in 2012, Flatiron’s goal was to gather and analyze data on cancer treatments and sells software based on those insights to help researchers develop drugs more quickly, and with more targeted precision. Toward that end, the company produced an oncology-specific electronic health record (EHR). It currently partners with more than 265 community cancer clinics, six major academic research centers and 14 out of the top 15 therapeutic oncology companies. Roche already holds a 12.6% stake... Read More »Schedule a demo
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