RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Biotech industry readies for " Pharma M&A Spree" M&A tends to pick up as company’s approach big Loss of Exclusivity (LOE) events.
For Merck, they’re facing a $30B LOE in 2028 with Keytruda and have made big bets on Acceleron ($11.5B) cardiovascular platform in 2021 and Prometheus ($10.8B) I/O platform in 2023 + several mid-sized deals are attempts to plug that.
AbbVie is a few years ahead, having just gone through this process with the $21B Humira LOE in 2023.
Every management team has their own style with the types of buyouts they prefer. Pfizer, AbbVie and BMS tend to take big bets, with much higher average deal sizes. In contrast, Lilly, Novo Nordisk and J&J tend to be much lower. With those larger $, Pfizer and BMS tend to acquire companies with more developed lead assets, usually Phase 3 or beyond. Earlier stage assets are seeing deals in the US$1-5 Billion range.
Overall, the vast majority of deals had at least a Ph2 asset. For late-stage clinical development companies with I/O oncology Ph2+ assets or later, Big Pharma's M&A "sweet spot" is in the US$5-$15 Billion range.. Pharma pays up for guaranteed near-term revenue.
ONCY's is a late-stage development company with a platform technology in pelareorep that is being developed in multiple cancers with unmet medical treatment needs and is on the door-step of an near-term revenue with the grant of Breakthrough Designation (BTD) and Accerated Approval (AA) for pelareorep in breast and pancreatic cancer, either as a monotherapy or in combination with other biologics like immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), bispecifics, ADCs, cell & gene (CGT)/ CAR-T therapy, and small molecules, such as CDK4, CDK6, and PARP inhibitors, for example.