Look back at pharma news to Nov 17

Last week’s most interesting news included a mega licensing deal by Germany’s Bayer, which acquired rights to Loxo Oncology’s cancer candidate larotrectinib for up to $1.55 billion. There was also a great deal of news on the regulatory front, with Heron Therapeutics gaining US Food and Drug Administration approval for its CINV drug Cinvanti. Celgene and bluebird bio were granted Breakthrough and PRIME designation for their multiple myeloma candidate bb2121, and FDA approval came through for AstraZeneca’s asthma drug Fasenra and Ultragenyx’ Sly syndrome treatment Mepsevii.

Bayer makes a second wave with acquisition of Loxo’s drug

Loxo Oncology and Bayer announced the formation of a global development and commercialization  partnership for larotrectinib in addition to LOXO-195, another Trk inhibitor, noted Dr Zach Hartman on the Seeking Alpha blog. Under the terms of the arrangement, Loxo received $400 million in upfront payment, with another $650 million in milestone payments possible. Loxo will head up the US regulatory development of these agents and Bayer will take on the ex-US development, and the companies will share the costs of development 50/50. For this, in addition to double-digit royalties and up to $500 million in sales milestones, Bayer will lay claim to the commercialization rights of these agents.