Abbot is buying St. Jude Medical for $25 billion. STJ is higher by 25% in the pre market.
More interestingly, ABBV is buying privately held Stemcentrx for $5.8 billion. Stemcentrx is a Peter Thiel backed company. That man had signed a deal with the devil, which explains his wanton success.
Stemcentrx, a closely held biotech firm based in South San Francisco, California, has five experimental drugs in human trials. The leading candidate is for small cell lung cancer, targeted at a protein called DLL3 that is expressed in 80 percent of small cell lung cancer patients’ tumors and not in healthy tissue, according to a statement on Thursday. Patients are enrolling in a final-stage test of the company’s lead drug, called Rova-T, which could be on the market by 2018 if approved, Chief Executive Officer Rick Gonzalez said.
“We have dedicated ourselves to oncology and we view it as our second major growth platform,” he said in a telephone interview. “Stemcentrx in particular fits well as a major platform play for us in solid tumors.”
Lastly, MDVN received a bid from SNY for $9.3 billion, a modest 8% premium to yesterday’s close. I am almost certain the primadonnas at MDVN will ask for moar.
I won’t make too much out of these deals, as the healthcare industry is rife with misdirection and convoluted motives. But the investment bankers must be glad to see activity.
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“I won’t make too much out of these deals, as the healthcare industry is rife with misdirection and convoluted motives. But the investment bankers must be glad to see activity.”
You won’t make too much now, but you will when your insurance premiums go up again.
L.A. billionaire Soon-Shiong gets $148-million payday even as his firm’s stock tanks
Even though its shares have tanked, the Southern California biotech firm NantKwest Inc. gave its top executive, Patrick Soon-Shiong, a pay package last year worth almost $148 million, according to a stock filing Wednesday.
Soon-Shiong sold shares in NantKwest, a San Diego cancer research firm, to the public in July. Its stock was priced initially at $25 a share, and surged over the next couple of days. But the shares have sunk since then and are now down 65% since the IPO, closing Wednesday at $8.73.
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The world of finance has realized that patented drugs are like owning taxi medallions in a NYC where there the taxi commission doesn’t regulate rates and there is no Uber to provide competition. You will be milked.