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AstraZeneca Buys Pearl Therapeutics

Pharma: Acquisition adds lung drug candidate to AstraZeneca’s pipelinerebuilding campaign

by Lisa M. Jarvis
June 14, 2013 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 91, Issue 24

AstraZeneca Deals Since March

Acquires Pearl Therapeutics for pulmonary disease drug

Acquires Omthera Pharmaceuticals for dyslipidemia treatment

Licenses Bind Therapeutics’ kinase inhibitor

Signs small-molecule drug design deal with Alchemia

Licenses Horizon Discovery cancer therapies

Acquires AlphaCore Pharma for cholesterol management enzyme

Signs deal with Moderna Therapeutics for messenger RNA therapeutics

In a bid to stay competitive in treating respiratory diseases, AstraZeneca is paying up to $1.15 billion for the privately held biotech firm Pearl Therapeutics. The acquisition is the latest in the British drugcompany’s piecemeal rebuilding of a new-product pipeline that has fallen apart inrecent years.

AstraZeneca brought in Pascal Soriot as CEO last October to find new products that could offset patent losses on top-selling drugs such as the antipsychotic medicine Seroquel.In March, Soriot unveiled a strategy that couples R&D consolidation and layoffs with small acquisitions and licensing deals.

Since then, the company has announced three acquisitions and a string of partnerships.The pacts cover multiple modalities but are focused on three areas: oncology, respiratory disease, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

The Pearl acquisition is crafted both to add a late-stage drug and to maintain AstraZeneca’s stronghold in the respiratory arena. Pearl’s most advanced drug candidate is PT003, a fixed-dose combination of formoterol, a long-actingß2 agonist (LABA), and glycopyrrolate, a long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA). The combination therapy is in Phase III studies for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

COPD is critical for AstraZeneca, which saw sales of Symbicort, another combination drug, reach $3.2 billion in 2012. Yet fresh competition could erode the firm’s leading position. Earlier this year, GlaxoSmithKline and Theravance asked U.S. regulators to approve Anoro, a LABA/LAMA combination drug. Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim are not far behind with COPD drugs.

The addition of PT003 “plugs a hole in the respiratory portfolio,” Barclays Capital stock analyst Mark Purcell said in a note to AstraZeneca investors. Although PT003 will arrive later than competing compounds—a New Drug Application should be filed with FDA in 2015—the purchase still gives AstraZeneca a slice of the growing LABA/LAMA market, which Purcell forecasts will total $4 billion annually by 2020.

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