Takeover Tuesday: Novartis scoops up Tourmaline Bio

Novartis said it would buy Tourmaline Bio in a deal worth roughly $1.4 billion, picking up an experimental drug that has shown potential in cardiovascular disease. The Swiss pharma giant is paying $48 a share for Tourmaline, a 59% premium to its closing price of about $30 on Monday.

The centerpiece of the deal is pacibekitug, a drug being tested in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and other heart conditions. Mid-stage trial data released in May showed the drug led to deep reductions in a level of inflammation tied to heart disease.

Novartis has been moving to build out its pipeline as some of its top drugs, including heart medicine Entresto, face looming generic competition. It announced in April it would buy another biotech, Regulus Therapeutics, scooping up an experimental kidney drug.

pharma

Lilly will let biotechs use its AI models in return for their data

Eli Lilly will start allowing biotechs to use its artificial intelligence models for free to help predict the behavior of potential drug candidates. But there's a catch: The pharma company wants to use data from those companies to improve its models.

The models will be available on a new platform called Lilly TuneLab. The first algorithm offered will be one for predicting small-molecule drug properties and one for assessing whether antibodies are amenable to further development. Lilly will add more in the future, including a model from drug development AI company Insitro focused on analyzing data produced in live animals.

On the other side of this platform, Lilly wants to add other companies' data to be able to train its models and increase the types of drug candidates represented. Lilly said it will not see the partner companies' data, since the biotechs will keep the information private on their servers while helping update the models' training.

pharma

Lilly looks into gene therapies for obesity

Speaking of Lilly — the pharma company has also signed a collaboration agreement with Remedium Bio to develop gene therapies for obesity and type 2 diabetes, Remedium said yesterday.

This is part of a movement by pharma compaines to develop longer-lasting treatments for obesity, which they argue will be more attractive to patients than the current therapies that are injected once a week. Novo Nordisk, along with Wave Life Sciences and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, have been studying the potential of using RNA-interference to treat obesity.

However, it's not yet clear how feasible it would be to create a long-lasting treatment for obesity, much less one that is a one-time therapy. Some experts also fear an over-medicalized approach to addressing the issue of high obesity rates. (We wrote about all that in an earlier story here.)

Remedium did not disclose the specific terms of the deal, but said that it will receive an upfront payment, equity investment, and potential milestone payments from Lilly.

drug pricing

GLP-1 drugs are cost-effective but still pose budget threats

A new analysis finds that Wegovy and Zepbound are cost-effective, but that still doesn't mean they are affordable for individuals, employers, or the health system.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that tracks the cost-effectiveness of prescription medicines, determined that the GLP-1-based drugs are cost-effective since they help reduce the risk of many health issues like cardiovascular complications. ICER used the average yearly net prices for this analysis, which it said are $6,830 for Wegovy and $7,970 for Zepbound.

The conundrum is that because so many people are eligible for the drugs in the U.S., the health care system would not be able to cover their costs.

Nearly one-third of self-funded employers are considering stopping coverage or unsure about continuing coverage in the next one to two years, according to a recent survey by Brown & Brown, an insurance brokerage.

"They're both cost effective and completely unaffordable," said David Rind, ICER's chief medical officer.