UK biotech Mission Therapeutics has sold its Phase 2-ready acute kidney injury drug MTX652 to Australia’s Dimerix in a deal worth up to $292 million (€254.7 million), freeing Mission to concentrate resources on its central nervous system (CNS) pipeline.
Eli Lilly has agreed to acquire AtaiBeckley for up to $3.8 billion (€3.3 billion), turning a psychedelic drug developer built from German and British roots into one of the sector’s largest pharmaceutical takeovers.
Novartis has agreed to acquire UK-based Myricx Bio for up to $1.5bn, adding a preclinical antibody-drug conjugate platform built around a novel payload class for solid tumours.
Paris-based Ipsen has agreed to acquire Swiss biotech Memo Therapeutics AG in a deal worth more than €700m, adding the clinical-stage BK polyomavirus antibody potravitug to its rare-disease pipeline.
Paris-based Ipsen has agreed to acquire US biotech Kartos Therapeutics in a deal worth up to $1.75bn, adding a late-stage blood cancer programme to its growing oncology pipeline.
Thalia Therapeutics is acquiring Sanmirna Therapeutics for an initial £3.675 million and up to £13 million in milestone payments, adding the clinical-stage acute myeloid leukemia (AML) candidate miRisten and transforming the company from a preclinical platform into a clinical-stage RNA therapeutics company.
Recent preclinical data published in Molecular Therapy suggest the company may be closer than ever to answering that question. Its platform did not emerge from a single discovery programme, but from a sequence of acquisitions that brought together the key ingredients for in vivo cell engineering: mRNA payloads, lipid nanoparticle delivery, and targeted immune-cell guidance. Across big pharma, companies are increasingly assembling in vivo CAR-T platforms piece by piece, raising a broader question about whether the next generation of cell therapy will be built in-house, or bought.
French pharmaceutical group Servier has agreed to acquire sevasemten and the muscular dystrophy business built around it from US biotech Edgewise Therapeutics Inc. in a transaction worth up to US$2.65bn, giving the Paris-based company a late-stage entry into Becker and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
T-CURX acquires Pantherna: does this mark the start of a new race for the next generation of CAR-T therapies? The Würzburg- and Munich-based CAR-T company T-CURX is acquiring the Berlin-based mRNA and LNP company Pantherna Therapeutics. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Pantherna is to continue operating in Hennigsdorf as a wholly owned subsidiary.
Italy’s Angelini Pharma has struck a deal to buy Catalyst Pharmaceuticals for $4.1 billion (€3.5 billion) to enter the US market.
ROGER HARRIS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRA-stock.adobe.com