BEIJING – Beigene Ltd. out-licensed its anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody tislelizumab to Novartis AG in a deal worth up to $2.2 billion, including $650 million up front. Novartis gains rights to develop and commercialize tislelizumab in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the EU, the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Russia and Japan.
As a virtual 39th J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference begins, typically one of the biggest events of the year, biopharma dealmaking barreled ahead with five new deals Jan. 11 that could eventually hit $1.04 billion in total.
Bluebird Bio Inc. CEO Nick Leschly conceded that it’s “hard for folks on the outside looking in” to understand why the firm would cleave its severe genetic disease (SGD) and oncology efforts into two independently traded public companies, but said the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm is making the change by the end of this year in order “to make sure we can basically fall down and get back up and learn everything we can in the most disciplined manner,” he said.
DUBLIN – Sanofi SA is paying $1.1 billion up front and up to $350 million more in potential clinical development and regulatory milestones to acquire antibody developer Kymab Ltd. The deal adds to Sanofi’s pipeline first-in-class OX40-ligand blocker KY-1005, which recently hit the primary endpoints of a phase IIa trial in atopic dermatitis, as well as a second clinical-stage asset, KY-1044, an ICOS agonist in development for solid tumors. It also brings Sanofi a new antibody discovery platform, comprising several transgenic mouse strains, which collectively encode all the building blocks required to produce fully human antibodies.
Forge Therapeutics Inc. spinout Blacksmith Medicines Inc. said Eli Lilly and Co. has committed up to $300 million in milestone payments to back its creation of five new immuno-oncology and inflammation-focused medicines targeting human metalloenzymes.
Chimerix Inc., which already has COVID-19 and smallpox therapeutics in clinical trials, has acquired privately held Oncoceutics Inc., bringing ONC-201, a small-molecule dopamine receptor D2 antagonist and caseinolytic protease agonist for treating recurrent gliomas harboring the H3 K27M mutation, into the fold.
DUBLIN – Curevac AG has entered a global alliance with Bayer AG to accelerate its efforts to bring a third, desperately needed mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to market. The vaccine in question, CVnCoV, began a pivotal phase IIb/III trial on Dec. 14.
Pointing to his company’s work on “the next frontier in small molecules,” Ribometrix Inc. CEO Mike Solomon said the potential $1 billion-plus deal with Roche Holding AG offers evidence of big pharma’s mounting interest. Expertise in RNA folds helped Ribometrix nail down an agreement with Basel, Switzerland-based Roche’s Genentech arm that brings $25 million up front and potential milestone payments beyond $1 billion, as the pair discovers and develops RNA-targeted small-molecule therapeutics. Genentech gains exclusive rights to several predefined targets, including an exclusive global license for the development and commercialization of molecules.
LONDON – Family-owned Angelini Pharma is to buy Swiss startup Arvelle Therapeutics GmbH for $960 million, acquiring full European rights to the epilepsy drug cenobamate. The first tranche, of $610 million, will be paid following the EMA’s recommendation to approve cenobamate, which is expected at either the January or February meeting of the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use.
And just like that, it’s over. Bristol Myers Squibb Co. on Jan. 1 confirmed what many suspected, that FDA approval for lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel) did not happen by the Dec. 31 deadline, thereby automatically terminating the contingent value rights (CVR) agreement issued as part of its acquisition of Celgene Inc.
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