Cel­gene's top 20 up­front hits: Just how gen­er­ous was Cel­gene in deal­mak­ing? Let's re­view the records

Ed­i­tor’s Note: With Cel­gene show­cas­ing its “con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to work with part­ners” in twin deals to­day, we asked Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar, founder and CEO of Deal­For­ma, to take a look at the Big Biotech’s his­to­ry of deal­mak­ing, pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to the up­front.

Cel­gene signed 91 deals over the last 10 years, so it’s def­i­nite­ly among the most ac­tive deal mak­ers. That’s more deals than Bio­gen and Gilead and about as many as Genen­tech and Am­gen dur­ing the same pe­ri­od. BMS did 131. Cel­gene has made over $24 bil­lion in ac­qui­si­tions, buy­ing 11 biotech com­pa­nies since 2002. They’ve signed 58 com­pound and plat­form in-li­cens­es since 2009, some of which are ma­jor ex­pan­sions of pre­vi­ous deals. Those part­ner­ships and a few oth­er deal types that we track have paid out over $3 bil­lion in up­front pay­ments. How­ev­er, a ma­jor­i­ty of those are op­tion deals.

Not count­ing deals that were ter­mi­nat­ed pri­or to 2019, there’s over $7 bil­lion in mile­stones that may soon be on a very dif­fer­ent look­ing de­ci­sion chart.

Here’s the chart of the top 20 up­fronts:

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