Deals & M&A

With an EU submission imminent for its MCT8 deficiency therapy Emcitate, Egetis is in talks with “certain external partners” about an acquisition.

The US biotechs are joining forces to form a new, listed company with sufficient cash to advance EIP’s potentially disease-modifying drug candidate through Phase II development in dementia with Lewy bodies, which presents a high unmet need.

Plus deals involving Biorchestra, Takeda/F-star, TaiGen/Joincare, Dr Reddy’s/Eris, Kaken/bitBiome, CJ Bioscience/4D Pharma, Ono/Macomics, Daiichi Sankyo/Zymeworks, Celltrion/Genuv and more.

The pharma licensed global rights to Scynexis’s Brexafemme, a first-in-class triterpenoid antifungal approved for treat and prevent recurrence of vaginal yeast infections, for $90m up front.

The Swiss major gets around 3,000 proposals per year and has assembled a 120-strong team to sift through them and access the best science out there. Global head of pharma partnering James Sabry tells Scrip what Roche is looking for in a partner.

Celltrion founder and chairman Jung Jin Seo has outlined why he has decided to return to the Korean biosimilars major and the business priorities for the group if it is to emerge as a top-tier global biopharma operation.

Vertex and CRISPR look beyond beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease. Also, Bicycle gets $50m up front in Novartis deal, Regeneron commits $75m initially under a Treg collaboration with Sonoma, and Jounce gets a better deal from Concentra to wave off Redx merger.

The arrangement ends a nearly 10-year collaboration between Pfizer and Merk KGaA on the PD-L1 inhibitor that, despite some success, never reached its ultimate goal.

Acquisitions usually depress the stock price of the buyer to reflect the dilution and propel the shares of the acquired to reflect the premium. But not always.

In this week's podcast version of Five Must-Know Things: ripples from SVB’s failure; Karuna’s schizophrenia win; big pharma remains open to partnering; ChatGPT comes to medical congresses; and China’s COVID vaccine lessons.

Gilead has waived its option to acquire Pionyr, allowing the US biotech to explore other partnerships and financing opportunities as it advances a promising pipeline of macrophage-targeting antibodies.

The company aims to deliver DNA via lipid nanoparticles as well as delivering LNPs systemically to tissues beyond the liver and spleen, which the CEO called a “frontier” in an interview.