Allergan goes on a buying spree for NASH drugs, adding Akarna in M&A double header
Allergan $AGN is pulling out all the stops in ramping up its own NASH pipeline in record time. Just hours after announcing plans to bag Tobira $TBRA for a jaw-dropping premium in a $1.7 billion deal, the fast-growing pharma bagged the fledgling UK biotech Akarna for $50 million upfront and an unspecified set of milestones.
This new deal adds Akarna’s lead therapy, one of its non-bile acid FXR agonists dubbed AKN-083. And there are more preclinical FXR therapies in the works that will now be fed into Allergan’s overnight R&D expansion. Akarna announced a modest $15 million B round back in February.
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