| | | |   | Hello, everyone. Damian here with a good news/bad news look at biotech's latest dealmaking and an update on the erstwhile Valeant Pharmaceuticals. | | | Buyouts are back in biotech Nearly $3 billion will change hands in a pair of biotech buyouts disclosed yesterday, a sign that despite months of flagging sentiment, billion-dollar deals still get done in the drug industry.
GlaxoSmithKline is buying Sierra Oncology for $1.9 billion, which, as STAT’s Adam Feuerstein reports, comes three months after Sierra’s lead drug, a treatment for the blood cancer myelofibrosis, succeeded in a late-stage clinical trial. The deal values Sierra at $55 per share, which is a 39% premium to its previous closing stock price and a nearly four-fold increase to where the company was trading as recently as January.
Separately, Halozyme is acquiring Antares Pharma for about $960 million, STAT’s Jonathan Wosen reports, doubling down on its business of licensing drug-delivery technologies to other manufacturers. | And yet  (STAT) Yesterday’s bolus of buyouts helped the XBI, a closely watched biotech index, rise about 4%. But it’s still down by more than 20% since the start of the year, as neither data nor dealmaking seem to affect sentiment for the sector.
Biotech has slipped into something of a holding pattern in 2022. Companies tend to go down when there’s bad news and good news alike, and the few that can successfully raise money often do so at a discount to the better days of 2021. | Rare disease patients deserve protection from Washington politics Right now, politicians need a win, but rare disease patients could lose. In Congress’ rush to pass something, therapies for rare diseases and cancers could face an increase of between 400% and 800% in Medicare Part D costs. There is a better way that protects patients. Learn more. | The former Valeant is back under federal scrutiny While the scandal-plagued Valeant Pharmaceuticals has regrouped and rebranded under the less-fraught name of Bausch Health, the company has again drawn the attention of the Department of Justice, this time over marketing.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, federal authorities are investigating whether Bausch promoted four skin drugs for uses not listed on their FDA-approved labels. Investigators are particularly interested in any financial assistance that may have been provided to Medicare patients who were prescribed the drugs and payments to physicians for helping to promote them.
Read more. | A turning point for Turning Point? Who says the market can't recognize good news. Monday night, after stock trading closed, Turning Point Therapeutics released data on its drug repotrectinib for non-small lung cancer, in which a gene called ROS1 is fused to another gene, causing it to always be on.
Tumors shrank by at least a third in 79% of patients who had not previously been treated with a drug targeting ROS1 such as Pfizer's Xalkori or Roche's Rozlytrek. In patients who had previously been treated with those drugs, 42% saw their tumors shrink. But Athena Countouriotis, the company's CEO, focused on a different number: that in both groups, at a year, more than 80% of patients continued to have a response.
Turning Point plans to meet with the FDA this quarter. Shares in the company rose 27% — but that's still down 75% from the stock's peak in January 2021. | More reads - A $2.1 million price tag for Bluebird Bio’s gene therapy is cost-effective, analysis finds. STAT+
- FDA addresses biopharma's diversity problem with new draft guidance. Endpoints
- Billionaire Platt-backed Engitix inks Takeda partnership. Bloomberg
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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