Lantheus Holdings Inc. is making waves in M&A with its second big deal of the month – and year – the acquisition of Evergreen Theragnostics Inc. for $250 million in cash up front and up to an additional $752.5 million in contingent payments. The transaction follows announcement of a definitive agreement to acquire Life Molecular Imaging Ltd., a subsidiary of Life Healthcare Group Holdings Ltd., on Jan. 13 for $350 million in cash at closing and a further $400 million in milestone payments.
As 2025 makes its debut, one of the topics gaining momentum in health care is the diagnosis and potential treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, a scourge that threatens to overwhelm society and drain treatment budgets around the world. One company looking to find solutions to the oncoming neurodegenerative disease tsunami is privately held Sunbird Bio Inc., which is developing blood-based diagnostic platform for neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Elevar Therapeutics Inc. will license Relay Therapeutics Inc.’s “NDA-ready” bile duct cancer therapy, lirafugratinib (RLY-4008), through a potential $500 million deal as Elevar, an HLB Co. Ltd. subsidiary, seeks to diversify its oncology portfolio following the U.S. FDA rejection of its liver cancer drug candidate in May.
As chronic drug shortages continue in the U.S., yet another congressional investigation into the problem has been launched. But instead of a wholistic search for the root causes, this one, launched by the Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, focuses on three drug companies – Pfizer Inc., Sandoz Inc. U.S. and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.
In its second big collaboration of the past six months, privately held Tentarix Biotherapeutics LP plans to discover and develop biologics for treating oncology and immunology indications with Abbvie Inc. The deal comes at a time of change at Abbvie, which is getting a new CEO, watching the marketplace erosion of bestselling Humira (adalimumab) and digesting two major acquisitions at a cost of billions.
Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. inked deals with Shattuck Labs Inc. and Numab Therapeutics AG aimed at bolstering its pipeline in oncology and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Ono struck a drug discovery collaboration and option agreement with Shattuck Labs to generate bifunctional fusion proteins for pathways involved in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. It also signed a global research, development and commercialization deal with Numab for its NM-49, a multispecific antibody designed to activate tumor-associated macrophage phagocytosis for treating cancers.
Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. inked deals with Shattuck Labs Inc. and Numab Therapeutics AG aimed at bolstering its pipeline in oncology and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Ono struck a drug discovery collaboration and option agreement with Shattuck Labs to generate bifunctional fusion proteins for pathways involved in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. It also signed a global research, development and commercialization deal with Numab for its NM-49, a multispecific antibody designed to activate tumor-associated macrophage phagocytosis for treating cancers.
The EMA has once again come in behind the U.S. FDA, granting market access to 77 new products in 2023, fewer than half the 157 approvals the FDA processed in the 11 months from January through December 2023.
Following up on a 2021 partnership with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Bridgene Biosciences Inc. has signed up a second international drug company, Galapagos NV, to use its chemoproteomic platform, IMTAC (Isobaric Mass Tagged Affinity Characterization), to discover small-molecule drug candidates.
Pharma-biotech pairings continued apace in the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) space, with 2023 capped by Legochem Biosciences Inc. signing a $1.7 billion licensure deal with Johnson & Johnson arm Janssen Biotech Inc. for the former’s Trop2-directed compound, the second-biggest Korean technology transfer agreement.
