Deb­o­rah Dun­sire is pay­ing $2B for a chance to leap di­rect­ly in­to a block­buster show­down with a few of the world's biggest phar­ma gi­ants

A year af­ter tak­ing the reins as CEO of Lund­beck, Deb­o­rah Dun­sire is mak­ing a bold bid to beef up the Dan­ish biotech’s port­fo­lio of drugs in what will like­ly be a di­rect leap in­to an in­tense ri­val­ry with a group of gi­ants now carv­ing up a grow­ing mar­ket for new mi­graine drugs.

Bright and ear­ly Eu­ro­pean time Mon­day morn­ing the com­pa­ny an­nounced that it will pay up to about $2 bil­lion to buy Alder, a lit­tle biotech that is far along the path in de­vel­op­ing a quar­ter­ly IV for­mu­la­tion of a CGRP drug aimed at cut­ting back the num­ber of crip­pling mi­graines pa­tients ex­pe­ri­ence each month. In a fol­lowup call, Dun­sire al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny will like­ly need 200 to 250 reps for this mar­ket­ing task on both sides of the At­lantic. And an­a­lysts were quick to note that the deal­mak­ing at Lund­beck isn’t done, with an­oth­er $2 bil­lion to $3 bil­lion avail­able for more deals to beef up the pipeline.

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