As it hap­pened: A bid­ding war for an an­tibi­ot­ic mak­er in a mar­ket that has rav­aged its peers

In a be­wil­der­ing twist to the long-suf­fer­ing mar­ket for an­tibi­otics — there has ac­tu­al­ly been a bid­ding war for an an­tibi­ot­ic com­pa­ny: Tetraphase.

It all start­ed back in March, when the mak­er of Xer­a­va (an FDA ap­proved ther­a­py for com­pli­cat­ed in­tra-ab­dom­i­nal in­fec­tions) said it had re­ceived an of­fer from Acel­Rx for an all-stock deal val­ued at $14.4 mil­lion.

The of­fer was well-timed. Xer­a­va was ap­proved in 2018, four years af­ter Tetraphase post­ed its first batch of piv­otal tri­al da­ta, and sales were nowhere near where they need­ed to be in or­der for the com­pa­ny to keep its head above wa­ter.

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