No­var­tis has just bought it­self a new can­cer ther­a­py as well as a new tech plat­form for $3.9 bil­lion in cash, bag­ging the French biotech Ad­vanced Ac­cel­er­a­tor Ap­pli­ca­tions $AAAP.

The phar­ma gi­ant is pay­ing a mod­est 44% pre­mi­um over the biotech’s mar­ket val­u­a­tion from Sep­tem­ber 28, when Bloomberg re­port­ed that No­var­tis was kick­ing the tires and run­ning the num­bers on the biotech’s drug Lu­tathera (177Lu-DOTATATE).

The drug is a ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal — us­ing ra­dioiso­topes to tar­get neu­roen­docrine tu­mors — a fo­cus where No­var­tis has con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence. The phar­ma play­er tout­ed the piv­otal da­ta for the drug from the NET­TER-1 study, which demon­strat­ed a 79% re­duc­tion in the risk of dis­ease pro­gres­sion, with an in­ter­im me­di­an pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival rate of 8.4 months that had yet to max out.

No­var­tis al­so gets a pipeline of drugs off the new plat­form with some near-term po­ten­tial it likes. That line­up on AAA’s ex­per­i­men­tal meds in­cludes 177Lu-PS­MA-R2, which is now en­ter­ing a Phase I/II study.

Ap­proved in Eu­rope, the FDA forced the biotech in­to the wait­ing line late last year af­ter shak­ing its head at the way the com­pa­ny had pre­sent­ed some of the da­ta in its ap­pli­ca­tion, forc­ing a re­jec­tion at the time. An ap­proval would build on No­var­tis $NVS OK for Afin­i­tor in ear­ly 2016 as a treat­ment for neu­roen­docrine tu­mors, as well as its mar­ket­ing of San­do­statin.

Bruno St­rig­i­ni

Now the biotech is wait­ing for an­oth­er dead­line to loom on the de­layed ap­pli­ca­tion, and No­var­tis clear­ly be­lieves that this time reg­u­la­tors should clear it for mar­ket­ing.

The deal falls right in­to No­var­tis’ sweet spot. Out­go­ing CEO Joe Jimenez — soon to be re­placed by R&D chief Vas Narasimhan — has said sev­er­al times that the com­pa­ny is pri­mar­i­ly in­ter­est­ed in adding bolt-ons in the $2 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion range. This deal beefs up its can­cer pipeline and port­fo­lio af­ter a ma­jor swap with Glax­o­SmithK­line land­ed the UK phar­ma gi­ant’s ad­vanced on­col­o­gy drugs.

Pe­ter Welford at Jef­feries likes this deal, start­ing the peak sales fore­cast at $650 mil­lion a year for Lu­tathera, with a chance to add on about $285 mil­lion through added ap­provals.

Im­pres­sive Phase III NET­TER-1 da­ta, clin­i­cian feed­back, and a pro­pri­etary US physi­cian sur­vey all un­der­pin our con­fi­dence in Lu­tathera. The prod­uct is based on a well known con­cept of so­mato­statin ana­logues for NETs, has al­ready treat­ed >3,000 pa­tients, and ad­dress­es an un­met med­ical need. We fore­cast $650m peak sales treat­ing midgut GEP-NETs for $30/ADS NPV at 100% prob­a­bil­i­ty, as­sum­ing AAA com­mer­cialis­es it­self in US/EU tar­get­ing the spe­cial­ist cen­tres. Adop­tion to treat oth­er types of NETs could of­fer sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial up­side, with on­ly $7/ADS NPV cur­rent­ly as­signed as­sum­ing 60% prob­a­bil­i­ty and $285m in­cre­men­tal peak sales.

“No­var­tis has a strong lega­cy in the de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of med­i­cines for neu­roen­docrine tu­mors where sig­nif­i­cant un­met need re­mains for pa­tients,” said Bruno St­rig­i­ni, the head of No­var­tis On­col­o­gy. “With Lu­tathera we can build on this lega­cy by ex­pand­ing the glob­al reach of this nov­el, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed treat­ment ap­proach and work to max­i­mize Ad­vanced Ac­cel­er­a­tor Ap­pli­ca­tions broad­er RLT pipeline and an ex­cit­ing tech­nol­o­gy plat­form.”

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

Paul Stoffels has made it clear that he views cutting jobs at Galapagos as difficult but necessary — but he’s getting creative about it.

Galapagos, headquartered in Mechelen, Belgium, has struck an arrangement with French contract research organization NovAliX to transfer its drug discovery and research activities. While NovAliX is based in Strasbourg, it will take over running the site that Galapagos ran in Romainville, France.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.