August round-up of pharma and biotech M&A activity

6 September 2017

Deals and rumors returned to the pharma mergers and acquisitions world in August after a quiet summer, with one in particular grabbing the headlines.

Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) splashed out on a big-money buy of Kite Pharma (Nasdaq: KITE), a big player in CAR-T cell therapies, while Japanese pharma major Daiichi Sankyo (TYO: 4568) denied that it was approached by Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) over a takeover.

Company	Takeover candidate	Value	Why?
Collidion	Plex Pharmaceuticals	An 80% equity stake in exchange for an undisclosed cash sum and contributing to a drug asset under development	To drive forward Plex's drug discovery programs, including in Parkinson's disease, glioblastoma, and cataracts
Bristol-Myers Squibb	IFM Therapeutics	$300 million on closing and payments of up to $1.01 billion for each of the first products from the two programs on the achievement of certain milestones	To give B-MS full rights to IFM’s preclinical STING (stimulator of interferon genes) and NLRP3 agonist programs focused on enhancing the innate immune response for treating cancer
Mallinckrodt	InfaCare Pharmaceutical	$80 million upfront and up to $345 million dependent on milestones	To acquire InfaCare's stannsoporfin, seen as having the potential to help thousands of infants whose severe jaundice is unresolved by current treatments
Rostec	Marathon Group	Undisclosed merger	Part of a state action for ensuring Russia’s security in the field of pharmaceuticals
SK Capital	Perrigo API	$110 million	An acquisition complementing other leading companies that SK owns and operates in the API and FDF value chain
Galena Biopharma	Sellas Life Sciences Group	All-stock definitive merger agreement under which Sellas will merge into and become an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Galena	To create a combined company focused on the development of novel treatments for cancer
Alvogen	Omega Bittner	Undisclosed	To complement and significantly strengthen Alvogen’s existing portfolio in the Russian region
Gilead Sciences	Kite Pharma	$11.9 billion	To acquire one of the leading players in the emerging field of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies
CSL Behring	Calimmune	$91 million upfront plus up to $325 million dependent on milestones	To acquire Calimmune's pre-clinical asset, CAL-H, an HSC gene therapy for sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia, which complements CSL Behring's product portfolio and expertise in hematology, and the additional proprietary platform technologies, Select+ and Cytegrity, to address challenges relating to the commercialization of stem cell therapies
Mercachem	Syncom	Undisclosed merger	To form a leading mid-sized CRO capable of meeting the needs of an industry demanding a huge bandwith of highly complex chemistry solutions
Regenxbio	Dimension Therapeutics	$86 million	To add two lead product candidates to the Regenxbio pipeline, DTX301 for the treatment of ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency and DTX401 for glycogen storage disease type Ia

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