Pharma’s Oncology Focus: Some Key Drivers With Pros And Cons For Patients

Pharma’s Oncology Focus: Some Key Drivers With Pros And Cons For Patients

Just in the first ten days of the brand-new year – 2019, three important oncology focused acquisitions were announced by three top global pharma companies.

On January 03, 2019, Bristol-Myers Squibb announced that it will acquire Celgene for a hefty sum of USD 74 billion to be a leading Biopharma player, focusing on high-value innovative medicines. As reported by BioSpace on January 04, 2019, the BMS CEO said, the combined might of the two pipelines will create “the number one oncology franchise” for both solid and hematologic tumors.

Just four days thereafter, on January 7, 2019, at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Eli Lilly announced that it will acquire targeted cancer drug maker Loxo Oncology for USD 8 billion. This deal gives the company TRK inhibitor Vitrakvi – the first drug approved by the FDA to target tumors based on genetic abnormality, rather than the location of the cancer.

On June 08 2019, at the same J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley, reportedly said that GSK has agreed to acquire already approved PARP inhibitor Zejula as well as a range of pipeline assets valued USD 5 billion.It’s noteworthy that Walmsley announced the company’s new focus on oncology just the last year and has now almost doubled its immuno-oncology pipeline.

Even in the last year – 2018, a significant number of oncology focused Merger and Acquisitions (M&A) took place. The acquisition values are also interesting – ranging from a few-hundred million to billions of USD. In this article, I shall examine what could be the main drivers of this emerging trend with its pros and cons from the patients’ perspective, in general. As a brief backdrop, let me start with a few examples of such M&As in 2018.

Some oncology focused M&As in 2018:

Following are examples of some oncology focused acquisitions that took place in 2018:

• In January 2018, Celgene Corporation, which has now been acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb, announced theacquisition of Juno Therapeutics for about USD 9 billion. This deal came shortly after Celgene’s deal for Impact Biomedicines valuing USD 1.1 billion.

• In late-January 2018, the biggest deals this year were by Sanofi. It acquired Waltham, Massachusetts-based Bioverativ for about USD 11.6 billion. Bioverativ was a spinoff by Biogen. About a week later, Sanofi bought Ghent, Belgium-based Ablynx for USD 4.8 billion.

• In April 2018, Roche completed its acquisition of Flatiron Health, an oncology-specific digital health company for about USD 1.9 billion.

• In the same month of April 2018, Shire sold its oncology business to France’s Servier for USD 2.4 billion.

• In May 2018,  Janssen Biotech, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals, announced that it was buying Rockville, Maryland-based BeneVir Biopharma, in a deal of more than USD 1 billion.

Thus, the question that follows: what could be the primary drivers of this trend?

The primary drivers:

In my view, the primary drivers for focus on the oncology segment by pharma and biotech companies is a combination of the following factors: …continue reading…