Quest Diagnostics sells ibrutinib royalty rights to Royalty Pharma for $485mm in cash

Quest Diagnostics Inc. has sold its royalty interest in the cancer candidate ibrutinib to Royalty Pharma for $485mm in cash. Ibrutinib is in Phase III for leukemia and lymphoma through a partnership between Pharmacyclics and J&J's Janssen Biotech. (Pharmacyclics owed Celera Corp. single-digit royalties on the project. Quest bought Celera in 2011, and thus gained the royalty rights to the compound.) Quest doesn't see ibrutinib as a core asset, and in line with other recent divestitures (the sale of the POC testing business HemoCue to Radiometer earlier this year and the OralDNA dental diagnostics company to Access Genetics last year), decided to sell the royalty interest so it can continue to focus more on its main diagnostics businesses. From the Celera purchase, Quest still holds onto royalty rights for other compounds, but it has yet to see any of that money.