How in­ter­est in a sin­gle can­cer drug led to Ipsen's takeover of Epizyme

It’s been a tough year for biotech com­pa­nies as a bear mar­ket tears through the sec­tor. Epizyme be­gan look­ing for ways to con­serve cash back in Jan­u­ary, months be­fore it made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to chop rough­ly 12% of its staff.

Ac­cord­ing to an in­side ac­count of its re­cent deal with Ipsen, the Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech and its con­sul­tants reached out to — and got re­ject­ed from — more than two dozen on­col­o­gy com­pa­nies about “pos­si­ble strate­gic trans­ac­tions” be­fore the French phar­ma swooped in with an of­fer to buy the en­tire com­pa­ny for $247 mil­lion in cash.

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