Look back at pharma news in the week to April 3, 2020

Much as COVID-19 was the focus of news last week, other things were happening too. Among these, Danish CNS specialist Lundbeck suffered a couple of signification setbacks, first with Tourette syndrome candidate Lu AG06466, and then even worse, with Parkinson’s hopeful foliglurax. There was better news for Bayer and Merck & Co, whose heart failure drug vericiguat saw positive results presented at the American College of Cardiology’s meeting. On the legal front, there was a major disappointment for Amarin, when a US court declared that the company’s patents on its fish oil-based cardiovascular drug Vascepa were not valid. Deal-making news included Daiichi Sankyo acquiring gene therapy manufacturing technology from Ultragenyx, signalling an interest in expanding the company’s focus. Also, Fate Therapeutics agreed a deal with Johnson & Johnson for rights to its iPSC platform.

For Lundbeck’s acquisition strategy bad luck comes in threes

It is admirable for a company like Lundbeck to have recognized the need to restock its drug development pipeline and turned to putting its cash pile to some serious acquisitions in an effort to remedy the problem, commented Jacob Plieth on Vantage, the editorial arm of the Evaluate group.