Mergers & acquisitions
The combined company began trading Friday under the Nasdaq symbol TECX. A $130 million private placement was also completed, with a cash runway into mid-2027.
Vanda Pharmaceuticals has rejected two unsolicited takeover offers, saying that they are “opportunistic attempts” to acquire the biotech at a heavily discounted price.
Biogen recently bolstered its pipeline with a potential $1.8 billion acquisition of Human Immunology Biosciences, following other big players looking to cash in on a global immunology market estimated to grow to $257 billion by 2032.
After rejecting a previous takeover offer from Future Pak, Vanda Pharmaceuticals is now fielding another acquisition proposal from Cycle Pharmaceuticals, which values the biotech at $8 per share.
Illumina on Monday announced that its board of directors is spinning off Grail and has applied to list the cancer diagnostics company on the Nasdaq.
Analysts predict a booming year for mergers and acquisitions, powered by obesity drug sales and pressure from upcoming patent expirations.
As evidenced by this week’s buyouts by J&J and Merck, Big Pharma appears to have found a sweet spot favoring smaller deals over megabillion-dollar acquisitions.
Merck on Wednesday announced a deal worth $3 billion to buy EyeBio and its first-in-class trispecific antibody Restoret, marking the pharma’s return to the ophthalmology space after nearly a decade.
Johnson & Johnson’s deal for Numab Therapeutics’ bispecific antibody NM26, slated to enter Phase II studies, comes on the heels of J&J’s $850 million Proteologix bispecific antibody acquisition.
The potential purchase by the Japanese conglomerate could secure access to Calliditas’ IgA nephropathy therapy Tarpeyo, which won the FDA’s full approval in December 2023.
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