Gener­ics gi­ant and No­var­tis di­vi­sion San­doz signed a deal with Astel­las for world­wide rights to the an­ti­fun­gal drug mi­ca­fun­gin sodi­um, al­so known as My­camine.

San­doz and Astel­las put out word Tues­day that the deal has been signed, with a ten­ta­tive clos­ing date some­time in the first half of the year. Astel­las said in a state­ment that San­doz is pay­ing be­tween $62.5 mil­lion and $75 mil­lion up­front — de­pen­dent on when the deal ac­tu­al­ly clos­es — with po­ten­tial for mile­stone pay­ments based on sales.

Astel­las said in a state­ment that the agree­ment is part of its ef­forts to op­ti­mize where re­sources are al­lo­cat­ed and “achieve sus­tain­able growth.” The com­pa­ny al­so said that the drug, al­so ap­proved in Japan as Fun­guard, made $135 mil­lion in the 12 months end­ing on March 31, 2022.

My­camine is an echinocan­din, one of three lead class­es of an­ti­fun­gal agents, and was FDA-ap­proved in 2005 be­fore the merg­er that cre­at­ed Astel­las. It is cur­rent­ly in­di­cat­ed for both in­va­sive can­didi­a­sis and esophageal can­didi­a­sis, on top of pre­vent­ing can­di­da and as­pergillus in­fec­tions in pa­tients go­ing through hematopoi­et­ic stem cell trans­plan­ta­tion.

A San­doz spokesper­son told End­points News that while the di­vi­sion could not dis­close “de­tails of trans­ac­tion-re­lat­ed dis­cus­sions,” San­doz did a strate­gic eval­u­a­tion for a “trans­ac­tion of this na­ture.” The deal struc­ture al­so fac­tored in ex­pect­ed fu­ture trends as well as San­doz’s ex­pec­ta­tions re­gard­ing the tim­ing for gener­ic en­try in­to in­di­vid­ual mar­kets.

“Our strat­e­gy in this field is to cap­i­tal­ize fur­ther on our glob­al lead­er­ship in gener­ic an­tibi­otics, build­ing out our lead­ing po­si­tion in peni­cillins with a strong po­si­tion in cephalosporins, the largest mar­ket seg­ment by glob­al sales as well as oth­er rel­e­vant an­ti-in­fec­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the hos­pi­tal seg­ment. The planned ac­qui­si­tion of My­camine rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in this re­spect,” the spokesper­son added.

Roche announced another leadership shuffle Thursday morning – the head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will take over as CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals in March while the company’s corporate executive committee will make a spot for Levi Garraway, CMO and executive VP of global product development.

Thomas Schinecker will take over the top spot as Roche group CEO in March, leaving his spot as head of diagnostics.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.

After a whopping $4 billion asset buy from Nimbus Therapeutics, along with a $400 million deal with Hutchmed for a colorectal cancer drug, Takeda executives touted pipeline optimism on its latest earnings call this week.

That’s because the TYK2 inhibitor for psoriasis Takeda is getting from Nimbus, along with the Hutchmed fruquintinib commercialization outside of China, are just two of what it reports are 10 late-stage development programs of promising candidates.

Regeneron faced a substantial slump in overall revenue last year, but the focus still remains on some of its biggest blockbusters.

The pharma with several high-profile partnerships — Sanofi and Bayer among them — said Friday that Q4 revenue was down 31% for the quarter, and down 24% for the entire year. However, that won’t stop blockbuster expansion plans.

One of those is Eylea, the Bayer-partnered eye disease drug that has been in major competition with Roche’s Vabysmo. While Eylea is currently only approved in a 2 mg dose, the company recently filed for approval to give a 8 mg dose, in hopes of making a longer-lasting treatment.