Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - January 21, 2009 - (Page 7) Top 15 Pharma Deals inflammatory market (monoclonal antibodies in development for oncology not infrequently show benefit in this secondary area). Most of the year’s biggest acquisitions, including number one Roche/ Genentech (pending), number two Takeda/ Millennium, number five Lilly/ImClone, and number six Eisai/MGI, involved biotechs with cancer drugs on the market and more in the works. In the mean time, pharma is exiting cardiovascular and diabetes R&D. This year, Pfizer announced its exit from the cardiovascular space after spinning off Espirion, the biotech with an experimental “good” cholesterol-lifting candidate that the drug giant bought for $1.4 billion four years ago when that approach was showing promise. The RNAi race Big Pharma continued its rush to the latest “game changing” technology, RNA interference (RNAi), which promises to be the next decade’s version of monoclonal antibodies. Merck was first on the scene, dropping $1.1 billion two years ago for Sirna Therapeutics; in 2007, AstraZeneca signed a $400 million milestone deal with Silence Therapeutics while Roche sealed one worth up to $1 billion with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which holds most of the patents, making it the king of the genesilencing kingdom. In April, GSK got in on the act with a $600 million alliance with Regulus Therapeutics, which is chasing drugs using microRNA, aka RNAi 2.0. Then Alnylam scored again, winning a $1 billion milestone deal with Takeda in May, and announcing in July that Novartis was extending its 2005 development pact worth $700 million. All of the Alnylam alliances are nonexclusive and limited to specific targets in select disease categories; if the critical hurdle of systemic delivery can be overcome, the sky’s the limit for this Massachusetts– based biotech, with its vast vault of potential targets. But the explosion of early-stage deals isn’t limited to RNAi. GSK, for example, last year formed a $1.5 billion alliance with Cellzome, whose technology is used to identify small molecule inhibitors of specific kinase targets in inflammatory diseases. The next megamerger? Competitive intelligence consultant Cliff Kalb suggests that BMS’s Jim Cornelius is angling to make his firm the object of a bidding war between AZ and Pfizer — as he previously did at Lilly with stunning success by pitting J&J against Boston Scientific for Guidant, Lilly’s stent maker. “Cornelius is ‘cleaning up the balance sheet’ by spinning off the non-pharma businesses that are unattractive to pureplay pharmas. And he has recently done separate copartnering deals with both AZ and Pfizer for some potentially very lucrative drugs,” Kalb says. Last year, AstraZeneca signed a $950 million milestone deal with BMS to share the development costs of two late-stage diabetes compounds, while Pfizer inked a nearly identical deal for $1 billion for an anticoagulant and some early-stage obesity and diabetes agents. “If they want to hold onto the products, Cornelius will make Pfizer and AZ fight over BMS,” says Kalb If so, the pharmaceutical industry may finally see its equivalent of Superhero Fight Club, with two drug giants battling over a third, followed by a quaking megamerger. This may be a sign of a new order in M&As. “As the industry begins to contract, we will see both small biotechs and big pharmas start to fail, and they will be rescued or acquired by other companies,” says Stan Bernard. Stay tuned. Click here for the full version of this article at the Pharmaceutical Executive website. 8 HEALTH IT Obama and Biopharma! 11 BioFutures Forging a true industry– academia partnership 13 CALENDAR Next month’s pharma events 3 NEWS Pharma’s next ten years http://www.academyci.com/About/kalb.html http://www.academyci.com/About/kalb.html http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/Strategy Articles/The-New-Deals/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/570130
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