PHARMA DEALS DURING JULY 2014

(Part 2 out of 3)

by Jill Ogden

July proved to be another busy month of deal activity with around half of the top twenty deals with financial terms disclosed being acquisitions of whole companies, business units, products or royalties. In the last four days of this July, $6.3bn worth of commitments were made in acquisitions, licences and collaborations across five deals.

Continuing, but by no means exhausting, the seemingly cyclical theme of expanding and contracting pharma companies, Reckitt Benckiserannounced this month that it intends to spin-off its pharmaceuticals unit into a separate company with a UK listing. Deutsche Bank analysts have estimated that Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals could have a potential value of around £2.9 bn ($4.89 bn), approximately 3.7 x net revenues for 2013.  Other analysts have estimated the separate pharma unit could be worth anywhere between £2 bn to £5.5 bn. However, with revenues falling by 8 per cent in H1 2014 as a result of US generic competition for Suboxone (the pharma unit's top selling drug), it remains to be seen what level of valuation will be achieved. 

Elsewhere, London's Financial Times reported that GSK's CEO Andrew Witty had suggested in an interview that the new consumer healthcare business being set up as a JV with Novartis might also one day become a standalone company. A day or so later, a company spokesperson made a statement that there were no plans to spin off the consumer healthcare business in the near term.

Some licensing activity...

An initial glance at this month's table of top deals shows that "acquisition" is the key word, whether this is of companies, business units or product assets. However there are still some licensing/ partnering deals in evidence. It is good to see long-term, collaborative relationships progressing as exemplified by the deals between Zealand and Boehringer Ingelheim, and CureVacwith Sanofi Pasteur.

In Zealand's second collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, the companies will collaborate during a 4.5-year programme on the development of a novel therapeutic peptide in the cardio-metabolic area.  Zealand could receive up to $395 m for the first compound to reach the market plus R&D funding and tiered royalties on product sales. In 2014, under this new agreement, Zealand expects to receive payments from its partner of around $7.5 m. As we often see with these early stage collaborative deals, Zealand also retains co-commercialisation rights in its home territory, i.e. Scandinavia.

CureVac's relationship with Sanofi Pasteur dates back to 2011 when the companies entered into a collaboration and option agreement covering mRNA-based vaccines generated using CureVac's RNActive technology platform against five pre-defined pathogens. Sanofi Pasteur has now exercised its option to take an exclusive licence to the first RNActive vaccine. It will pay CureVac an undisclosed option exercise fee, as well as a fee to extend its exclusive and non-exclusive options on all five pathogens, and will fund all further R&D and commercialisation costs for the licensed vaccine.  CureVac is also eligible to receive clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones of up to $202 m, as well as royalty payments associated with products sales of RNActive vaccines.

Acknowledging the importance of therapeutic area expertise and in an innovative deal to expand the application of Cimzia outside its current indications, UCB has granted an exclusive licence to US-based dermatology specialist Dermira to develop Cimzia for psoriasis in the US, Canada and the EU. Cimzia, a pegylated antibody fragment that blocks tumour necrosis factor alpha, is currently indicated for several disorders including Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis.  Based on promising phase 2 data in psoriasis, Dermira will be responsible for phase III costs and will receive up to $49.5 m from UCB in development and regulatory milestones. If Cimzia gains approval in psoriasis, UCB will grant Dermira an exclusive commercial licence to market the product to dermatologists in North America; UCB will record the sales and pay Dermira tiered royalties based on sales to dermatologists in North America, and up to $40 m in commercial milestones.  In addition to the cash payments, UCB has made an initial $5 m equity investment in Dermira and will invest up to a further $15 m in its partner's future equity financings.

Collaborative spirit

The willingness of large and sometimes competing companies to collaborate and pool their assets and strengths appears to be increasingly a good sign.  This month we saw another batch of clinical collaborations, mostly in the field of immuno-oncology and focusing on immune checkpoint inhibitors to continue on from previous months.  These deals rarely have financials attached.  Amongst the collaborations announced during July was that between AZ and Kyowa Hakko Kirin (KHK) for a co-funded phase 1/1b immuno-oncology study to evaluate two separate combinations of three immunotherapeutic antibodies in multiple solid tumours.  The focus of the study will be KHK's anti-CCR4 antibody, mogamulizumab, in combination with either AZ's anti-PD-L1 antibody, MEDI4736, or AZ's anti-CTLA-4 antibody tremelimumab.

Existing partners Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and Ono Pharmaceuticalalso announced that they will jointly develop and commercialise multiple immunotherapies as single and combination treatments.  In this collaboration the focus is Opdivo (nivolumab), an anti-PD-1 antibody that is approved in Japan for unresectable melanoma, and Yervoy (ipilimumab), an anti-CTLA-4 antibody that is FDA approved for late-stage melanoma.

As part of the collaborative spirit, the UK's Medical Research Council(MRC) announced this month that it has entered into an arrangement under which seven leading pharma companies (AZ, GSK, J&J, Lilly, Pfizer, Takeda and UCB) have agreed to make available deprioritised development compounds for British academic researchers to work on.  Based on a similar concept to the AZ-MRC initiative reported in Issue 45, this open innovation programme will publish a list of available compounds and UK scientists will be able to apply for MRC funding to use them in academic research.  According to the MRC press release, the provisions covering any arising IP rights generated using the compounds will vary from project to project and will be similar to those currently used in academically-led research.

Fuente: PMLive

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510