It’s been two years since Take­da’s $62 bil­lion Shire buy­out, and the Tokyo biotech is still re­struc­tur­ing.

The com­pa­ny struck a deal with Ger­many-based Chep­lapharm to di­vest some non-core pre­scrip­tion prod­ucts for an up­front pay­ment of $562 mil­lion. The port­fo­lio — which in­cludes car­dio­vas­cu­lar, meta­bol­ic and an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry drugs sold most­ly in Eu­rope and Cana­da — doesn’t fit in with Take­da’s post-Shire vi­sion. The biotech has since shift­ed its fo­cus to gas­troen­terol­o­gy (GI), rare dis­eases, plas­ma-de­rived ther­a­pies, on­col­o­gy and neu­ro­science.

Giles Plat­ford

“These di­vest­ments rep­re­sent an­oth­er im­por­tant mile­stone in our port­fo­lio sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and op­ti­miza­tion strat­e­gy as we po­si­tion Take­da for con­tin­ued suc­cess across our five key busi­ness ar­eas … ” Giles Plat­ford, pres­i­dent of Take­da’s Eu­rope & Cana­da busi­ness unit (EU­CAN), said in a state­ment.

While the Shire buy­out made Take­da a top 10 in­ter­na­tion­al drug com­pa­ny, it al­so sad­dled the com­pa­ny with a re­port­ed $48 bil­lion in net debt. The biotech planned to shed $10 bil­lion in non-core as­sets to bal­ance it out.

Just a few months ago, Take­da an­nounced plans to of­fload some of EU­CAN’s non-core over-the-counter prod­ucts to Ori­farm Group for up to $670 mil­lion. Chep­lapharm, on the oth­er hand, is set to swal­low a port­fo­lio of pre­scrip­tion prod­ucts that gen­er­at­ed $260 mil­lion in net sales last year.

No em­ploy­ees are trans­fer­ring in con­nec­tion with the Chep­lapharm deal, ac­cord­ing to Take­da.

Last month, Take­da en­tered an agree­ment to sell its over-the-counter unit Take­da Con­sumer Health­care Com­pa­ny to US pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm Black­stone Group for about $2.3 bil­lion. It was Take­da’s fourth di­vest­ment deal this year.

In ad­di­tion to the Ori­farm deal, the biotech al­so agreed to di­vest as­sets in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic to Cell­tri­on for up to $278 mil­lion in June; and to Latin-Amer­i­can Hy­pera Phar­ma for $825 mil­lion in March. In Au­gust, Take­da be­gan of­fer­ing ear­ly re­tire­ment to Japan­ese em­ploy­ees.

Take­da ex­pects to close the Chep­lapharm deal by the end of this year.

“While the trust­ed prod­ucts in­clud­ed in the sale ad­dress key pa­tient needs in these coun­tries, they are out­side of our core busi­ness ar­eas of fo­cus. We are con­fi­dent that Chep­lapharm is the right part­ner to en­sure pa­tients con­tin­ue to have ac­cess to these prod­ucts,” CFO Cos­ta Saroukos said in a state­ment.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Israeli biotech Sol-Gel Technologies announced Friday that it got its hands on a rare disease drug candidate from PellePharm for almost $75 million, amid claims that the drug has the potential to reach a $300 million market.

Execs said on a conference call Friday morning that patidegib, a hedgehog signaling pathway blocker, is being investigated to treat Gorlin syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that increases the risk of developing certain kinds of cancer such as basal cell skin cancer and medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer. The disease affects around one in every 31,000 people, and an estimated 70,000 people worldwide.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The CDMO arm of one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates has posted its year-end results and plans for 2023, which include new construction.

Samsung Biologics netted north of KRW 3 trillion ($2.4 billion) in 2022 revenue and an operating profit of KRW 983.6 billion ($799 million), which the company touted on Friday as “record-high earnings.” The revenue boost was 55% compared to 2021.