Business Concentrates ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
Biogen is latest with a gene-therapy buy Downloaded via UNIV OF BATH on August 20, 2019 at 08:07:01 (UTC). See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.
The $800 million purchase of Nightstar is the third such acquisition announced in a week Biogen says it will acquire UK-based Nightstar Therapeutics for $800 million, a 68% premium over the firm’s stock market value of about $500 million on March 1, before the deal was announced. The news “clearly reinforces the notion that gene therapy continues to be a ‘hot’
A surgeon at Oxford Eye Hospital performs surgery to inject Nightstar’s gene therapy for X-linked retinitis pigmentosa into a person’s eye. therapeutic area” for drug company acquisitions in 2019, analysts from J.P. Morgan wrote in a note to investors. On Feb. 25, Roche announced that it will purchase the gene-therapy company Spark Therapeutics for $4.8 billion. The muscular dystrophy drug firm Sarepta Therapeutics recently said it will pay $165 million to acquire a small Ohio-based gene-therapy start-up called Myonexus Therapeutics. And in January, Johnson & Johnson
agreed to pay MeiraGTx $100 million in cash to develop and commercialize two retinal gene-therapy programs. Biogen dipped into the gene-therapy field in 2015 when it struck a deal with Applied Genetics Technologies Corp. (AGTC) to develop treatments for several eye diseases. AGTC stood to receive more than $1 billion in milestone payments, but Biogen pulled the plug on the collaboration in December 2018 after a clinical trial showed one of AGTC’s gene therapies was ineffective. Biogen will be giving gene therapies for the eye another try with Nightstar, which is also focused on rare inherited retinal disorders. It is running advanced-stage clinical trials for choroideremia and X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, diseases that are caused by mutations that lead to the degeneration of photoreceptors. Nightstar is using adeno-associated viruses to deliver corrective pieces of DNA into the eyes of people with the conditions. After the Spark acquisition and J&J’s partnership with MeiraGTx, Biogen “may have felt the need to pull the trigger before a more competitive bidding process ensued,” analysts from the investment firm SVB Leerink state in a report. The current moment in gene therapy is “reminiscent of the early days of biologics,” which spurred a bounty of deals between biotech and larger drug companies, the report says.—RYAN CROSS
BY THE NUMBERS
73% 16
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MARCH 11, 2019
The share of US R&D performed by industry in 2017, according to a new estimate from the National Science Foundation. Overall R&D spending totaled $542.2 billion. The federal government was the second-biggest spender, accounting for 22%. US R&D spending from all sources increased 5.5% in 2017 over 2016, the NSF says.
Merck KGaA raises heat on Versum Merck KGaA, the German drug and chemical conglomerate, is raising the heat in its effort to break up the merger of Versum Materials and Entegris and take Versum for its own. Versum and Entegris announced in late January plans to merge in an all-stock deal that would create a $3 billion-per-year supplier of materials and equipment to the semiconductor industry. Merck stepped in about a month later, saying it wants to acquire Versum instead. Its offer of $48 per share is a 52% premium over Versum’s stock price before the deal with Entegris was announced. Versum’s board responded tepidly and later rejected Merck’s proposal, calling it not superior. Now, Merck is making its case directly to Versum’s shareholders in an open letter dated March 5. Merck argues that an analysis by Lazard, Versum’s financial adviser, supports Merck’s view that its offer is superior to the merger with Entegris. The letter also points out that Versum entered the agreement with Entegris without a “market check” to determine what alternatives might be available. In Versum, both suitors see a company that will bring strengths in advanced deposition materials, chemical mechanical planarization slurries, cleaning formulations, and specialty gases, according to Mike Corbett, a principal at the electronic materials consulting firm Linx Consulting. At the same time, Corbett notes, Entegris and Merck are watching their semiconductor industry customers consolidate and their competitors—materials suppliers like Air Liquide, DuPont, and Linde—get bigger through acquisitions of their own. “The companies that aren’t doing deals aren’t moving forward in this industry,” he says.—MICHAEL
MCCOY
C R E D I T: N IG H TSTA R TH E RA P E U TI CS
GENE THERAPY
