Kite Pharma Soars with Two T-Cell Acquisitions
Kite Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ: KITE) has been busy lately, announcing two separate license deals in the last week of July. On July 25, it acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to technology that advances the development of off-the-shelf allogeneic T-cell therapies from renewable pluripotent stem cells, also known as the ATO system, in a deal with the University of California, Los Angeles. In connection with this agreement, Kite entered into a sponsored research agreement with UCLA to support ongoing preclinical research for the ATO system. Two days later, Kite entered into a license agreement with the National Institute of Health for the license to its fully human anti-CD19 chimeric antigen... Read More »LabCorp Ventures into Prenatal Testing
LabCorp (NYSE: LH), the world’s leading healthcare diagnostics company, has acquired Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM), a pioneer in non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for reproductive health, for a total purchase price of $371 million. In July of 2014, Sequenom purchased a license for non-invasive prenatal testing patents and applications from privately-held Mayo Medical Laboratories, and two months later it acquired intellectual property from privately-held Isis Innovation for non-invasive prenatal testing intellectual property. Today, Sequenom is the first laboratory to offer a clinically validated NIPT test (MaterniT®21), which has completed more than 500,000 tests to date. LabCorp’s most... Read More »June 2016 M&A Results Show Strength
Uncertainty is the hobgoblin of the merger and acquisition markets, and the month of June was a high point (or low point, depending on your perspective) for anxiety in global financial markets. Still, the healthcare deals kept rolling in. Our preliminary total for June 2016 stands at 115 transactions, exactly equal with the same month a year ago. Compared with May’s total of 141 deals, though, June’s total does look as if someone is applying the brakes. It takes 12 months to make a year, though, and one month’s results do not create a trend. The digital health sector turned in the strongest gain compared with June 2015, when only two deals were announced. This June, 22 deals were announced... Read More »Cells Sell…to GE At Least
GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of GE (NYSE:GE), recently announced that it had acquired a privately-held Sweden-based company, Biosafe Group SA, a developer, manufacturer and supplier of products for cell processing in the areas of adult stem cell banking. The combined biological, engineering and industrial capabilities should advance cell therapy and cellular immunotherapy GE’s interest in cellular research is not new. In January 2016, GE Ventures completed a $31.5 million co-investment with the Canadian government to create the BridGE@CCRM Cell Therapy Centre of Excellence in order to promote new technologies for the product of new cellular therapies in Toronto. Then, in April, GE Ventures... Read More »Takeda’s triple transactions
Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. (OTCQB: TKPYY) has been busy bolstering its role as a global leader in gastroenterology. On June 8, 2016, Takeda dished out $15 million for Theravance Biopharma’s (NASDAQ: TBPH) license to TD-8954, a selective 5-HT4 receptor agonist being investigated for potential use in gastrointestinal motility disorders, including enteral feeding intolerance. Less than a month later, Takeda bought the rights to develop ATC-1906 from Altos Therapeutics for an undisclosed amount. ATC-1906 is currently in Phase 1 studies for the treatment of gastroparesis and its symptoms. Then, just four days later, on July 5 2016, Takeda paid approximately $28 million to TiGenix N.V.... Read More »Schedule a demo
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