Company News

Roche and Foundation Medicine Inc reached a definitive merger agreement on 19 June enabling the Swiss multinational to acquire shares of the US molecular information company that it does not already own.

Roche is to buy the shares at $137 per share in cash giving a total transaction value of $2.4 billion and a total company value of $5.3 billion. This represents a premium of 29% to Foundation Medicine’s closing stock market price on 18 June and a premium of 47% and 68% to the 30-day and 90-day volume weighted average share price on the same day.

Syncona Investment Management Ltd of the UK has launched two new gene therapy companies to complement its existing portfolio which includes Nightstar Therapeutics Plc and Freeline Therapeutics Ltd.

The new companies, in which Syncona is the sole institutional investor, are Orbit BioMedical Ltd, a surgical platform company and SwanBio Therapeutics Ltd, a gene therapy company focused on neurological disorders. Syncona, formerly part of the Wellcome Trust, has invested $12 million in Orbit for an 80% stake, and $23 million in SwanBio for a 72% stake.

A gene therapy for a rare, genetic eye disorder has been selected by the US Food and Drug Administration for its Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy Designation in recognition of the product’s potential to treat an unmet medical need.

Two Phase 3 trials of the candidate Alzheimer’s drug lanabecestat have been stopped for futility, Eli Lilly and Company and AstraZeneca Plc announced on  12 June. Lanabecestat is an inhibitor of the beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE), which plays a role in the production of the amyloid beta protein. The accumulation of this protein in the brain is believed to be a major cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

A short 18 months after its launch as a new company, Microbiotica Ltd has entered into a multi-year collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche group, to discover, develop and commercialise biomarkers, targets and medicines for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Microbiotica was spun out of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2016 to research the  human microbiome, a term used to describe the genomes of microorganisms in the gut, including at least 1,000 species of bacteria.

Hookipa Biotech AG has signed a licencing deal with Gilead Sciences Inc giving the US company exclusive rights to its technology platform to develop vaccines targeting the  hepatitis B and the human immunodeficiency viruses. The agreement brings Austria-based Hookipa into a closer alliance with Gilead which invested an undisclosed amount of money in Hookipa’s €50 million Series C investment round in December 2017.

The European Medicines Agency has issued a positive opinion for Aimovig (erenumab), an antibody treatment for migraine prevention, only weeks after it was given approval by the US Food and Drug Administration. Both agencies highlighted the novelty of the drug which is the first preventive treatment for migraine.

It works by blocking the activity of calcitonin gene-related peptide, a molecule that is involved in migraine attacks.

AstraZeneca Plc’s biologic drug for respiratory disease, Fasenra (benralizumab), has failed a second Phase 3 trial in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). As a result, the company said it will not to make a regulatory submission for this indication.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the first stand-alone prosthetic iris, a surgically implanted device to treat adults and children whose irises are completely missing or damaged due to aniridia, a congenital condition, or other damage to the eye.

The device, CustomFlex Artificial Iris, is made of thin, foldable medical-trade silicone and is custom-sized and coloured for each individual patient. It is implanted by a surgeon and held in place by the anatomical structures of the eye or, if necessary, by sutures.

AstraZeneca Plc announced on 7 May that it will divest its legacy neuroscience product Seroquel by way of a sale to Luye Pharma Group Ltd, a Chinese investment holding company. The sale is part of AstraZeneca’s strategy of lightening up its portfolio to focus on three core therapy areas.

The core areas are oncology; treatments for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases; and treatments for respiratory diseases. Seroquel was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2007; it started losing its patent protection in 2012.