A biotech with a yen for pricey rare disease drugs — and bargain basement shopping — adopts another orphan in latest M&A pact
After making it through a long, painful haul to get past a CRL and on to an FDA approval last summer, little Chiasma has found a buyer.
Amryt $AMYT, a company known for its appetite for acquiring expensive drugs for rare diseases at bargain prices, snagged Chiasma and its acromegaly drug Mycapssa (octreotide) capsules in an all-stock deal — with an exchange of 0.396 shares of Amryt for every share of Chiasma.
The Needham, MA-based Chiasma $CHMA launched Mycapssa last September, but recorded less than $2 million in sales for Q1. Now Amryt says it can carve out $50 million in annual “synergies” with the deal as it uses its in-house group to market the drug and look for an expanded label. That may hit the staff of 84 employees at Chiasma.
Chiasma started the day with a market cap of $164 million, with shares shooting up 44% on news of the buyout.
Chiasma had crashed close to 5 years ago when the FDA rejected Mycapssa and sent the company back to the drawing board after questioning the design of their pivotal study. Their drug is an oral version of somatostatin analogues used to treat an overproduction of growth hormones that leads to organ growth.
After they finally won their OK, the company rolled it out at a cost of $5,152 for a 28-day course of therapy at the starting dose.
Amryt — with a market cap of $351 million — picked up some extra attention last fall when the company announced positive top-line results for its drug Filsuvez for epidermolysis bullosa, though it sparked plenty of questions about a failure on the secondary side. The biotech is perhaps best known for their acquisition of Aegerion, which netted two of the world’s most expensive therapies: Myalept and Juxtapid. They followed that deal by swiftly upping the price by 9.99%.
The buyer is now painting in some blockbuster numbers around its new drug, though it’s virtually starting from scratch on marketing.
Amryt CEO Joe Wiley noted:
We see significant revenue growth opportunities for Mycapssa in acromegaly and are also very excited to further develop the potential for Mycapssa in patients with carcinoid symptoms stemming from NET where we believe the commercial opportunity is significant.
