Look back at pharma news in week to Jan 26

By Barbara Obstoj-Cardwell. Editor

Last week’s impact news started with the announcement of two major acquisition deals: Sanofi’s $11.6 billion deal with Bioverativ, which has been widely slammed as the French pharma paying too much, and Celgene revealing an agreed, previously rumored, $9 billion takeover of CAR-T cell therapy specialist Juno Therapeutics. Added to this, there was BioCryst’s merger with Idera. Additionally, Puma Biotechnology announced that it expected a “negative trend vote” from the European Medicines Agency’s advisory committee on its breast cancer drug Nerlynx at next month’s meeting, while Swiss pharma giant Novartis revealed that it is paying Spark Therapeutics $105 million for European rights to gene therapy eye drug Luxturna.

Sanofi’s planned $11.6 billion acquisition of Bioverativ looks expensive, say analysts