July 17, 2020 - BioPharma Dive
France's largest pharmaceutical company is looking for assets to acquire, and may have found a potential target in a California biotech it already knows well.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Principia Biopharma is among the U.S. biotechs on Sanofi's list of possible acquisitions, citing people familiar with the matter. A Sanofi representative wrote in an email to BioPharma Dive that the company doesn't comment on market rumors or speculation.
Still, the report pushed Principia's share price just past the $84 mark, an almost 15% increase that translated to a $350 million bump in the South San Francisco company's market value. As of Thursday morning, Principia was worth $2.78 billion.
July 14, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
Drugmakers around the world are scrambling to develop a COVID-19 shot, and Emergent BioSolutions has already signed on to help produce doses for some major players. Now, the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based biopharma has scored a contract update to deploy future vaccine doses for a wholly different kind of health crisis.
On Monday, Emergent BioSolutions said it received a
contract modification
from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—to exercise an option valued at $258 million for extra doses of the company's up-and-coming anthrax vaccine, NuThrax.
July 13, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
The world has changed since Thermo Fisher Scientific reached a hard-fought, $11.5 billion agreement to acquire Qiagen, announced in the first days of March after months of negotiations and public rumors.
According to
the Financial Times
, the New York-based Davidson Kempner said Qiagen should seek a higher price than the €39, or about $43 U.S. per share that it first agreed to. The firm holds a 3% stake in the company, and wrote a letter to Qiagen’s management saying €50 would be more in line with its value.
July 13, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
In its second pharma deal, Dewpoint Therapeutics is
teaming up
with Merck to develop a new way to fight HIV using its molecular condensates platform. The duo kept specifics under wraps, but Dewpoint could net up to $305 million in upfront and milestone payments.
Biomolecular condensates are membraneless organelles whose main job is to surround and contain reactants—such as proteins and nucleic acids—for chemical reactions within cells. Researchers and drug developers have long known about condensates, but they have been “understudied” because they are difficult to analyze with conventional drug discovery methods.
