As­traZeneca CEO So­ri­ot bets up to $7B on a ma­jor league col­lab­o­ra­tion for a game-chang­ing HER2 can­cer drug

Af­ter years of out-li­cens­ing, prod­uct sales and what­ev­er else it took to float the sink­ing As­traZeneca ship, CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot is now a buy­er. And he’s go­ing big.

Thurs­day night, So­ri­ot an­nounced that As­traZeneca is pay­ing Dai­ichi Sankyo $1.35 bil­lion up­front to part­ner on trastuzum­ab derux­te­can, an an­ti­body drug con­ju­gate for HER2 ex­press­ing can­cers. Half ar­rives with the sign­ing, the oth­er half in a year. And So­ri­ot is adding up to $5.55 bil­lion more in de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial mile­stones, for a to­tal of $6.9 bil­lion, one of the largest pacts the com­pa­ny has ever struck.

Pas­cal So­ri­ot in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Feb­ru­ary 2019 Get­ty

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