Heartflow Holding Inc. is aiming to bring its noninvasive, artificial intelligence (AI)-based test for coronary heart disease to more doctors and patients via a merger with Longview Acquisition Corp. II. The deal, valued at an enterprise value of about $2.4 billion, is the latest in a steady stream of med techs queueing up to go public via a “blank check” special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) this year.
Med-tech mergers and acquisitions are at their highest level in four years and have already beat the full year of 2020, primarily due to a multibillion-dollar whopper completed in April. The number of industry partnerships also tower over prior years, with digital health efforts covering about 40% of the volume. Looking only at this year, the second quarter (Q2) of 2021 performed better than the first quarter (Q1) in terms of both M&As and deals.
Innovent Biologics Inc. and Ascentage Pharma Group Corp. Ltd. inked a three-component collaboration that comes with joint commercialization of an NDA-stage Bcr-Abl inhibitor and co-development of combination therapies, as well as Innovent taking a stake in Ascentage. The collaboration involves a deal worth up to $145 million and a $50 million investment.
Nanodx Inc. entered into a license agreement with IBM Research to use IBM’s nanoscale sensor technology and develop diagnostic platforms for rapid and cost-effective detection of various diseases, including COVID-19 and traumatic brain injury, among others. This marks IBM’s first collaboration to allow a medical device company to use its nanoscale technology.
It’s more than 20 years since the tobacco firm Philip Morris International Inc. commissioned a controversial research paper, “Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic,” which infamously argued that smokers cut state health care expenditure by dying early. The paper was considered an outrage and led to a high-profile apology from the company, after being widely derided by politicians and commentators internationally. The company’s July 9 proposal to buy the respiratory diseases firm Vectura Group plc for $1.2 billion is already looking just as provocative according to U.K. politicians and anti-smoking groups, who are calling for the government to intervene to stop it going ahead.
Following November’s equity investment that brought it a 14% ownership in Protomer Technologies Inc., Eli Lilly and Co. has acquired the privately held company engineering protein and peptide therapeutics that sense molecular activators. If development and commercial milestones are met, the deal could be worth more than $1 billion.
I-Mab Biopharma Co. Ltd. announced collaborations with mRNA biotech company Immorna (Hangzhou) Biotechnology Co. Ltd. and AI-enabled R&D company Neox Biotech Co. Ltd., gaining access to transformative technologies to discover and develop oncology therapeutics.
Sonde Health struck a deal with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. to embed its vocal health biomarker product, Sonde One, in the Snapdragon 888 and 778G 5G mobile platforms. The deal would make vocal biomarker monitoring native to the devices that use the company’s chips in mobile and IoT devices.
In a deal that could be worth up to $937.5 million, Biogen Inc. licensed rights to phase II-stage, brain-penetrant BTK inhibitor orelabrutinib from Innocare Pharma Ltd. for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and autoimmune diseases. It’s the first mega out-licensing deal for the Chinese firm, which will receive $125 million up front and is eligible to receive up to $812.5 million in potential development milestones and commercial payments, plus tiered royalties in the low to high teens on potential future net sales.
The M&As that are the current business model of the drug and device world are in for increased scrutiny under the executive order U.S. President Joe Biden signed July 9. Answering the administration’s call for a whole-of-government-approach to increasing competition in the U.S., the Department of Justice “will closely examine its antitrust guidelines and policy statements to better educate the public on its enforcement priorities, and it will heighten its efforts to prevent mergers that would result in excessive consolidations of purchasing power,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
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