Su­per­nus is mark­ing its ex­pan­sion in­to the Parkin­son’s dis­ease are­na, strik­ing a deal to buy out Adamas Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in a deal worth more than $400 mil­lion.

A year af­ter swoop­ing in on its first Parkin­son’s ac­qui­si­tion, the two com­pa­nies an­nounced that they had reached an agree­ment for Su­per­nus to pay up to $9.10 per share in cash as part of the ac­qui­si­tion — close to $450 mil­lion.

“This ac­qui­si­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to fur­ther build a strong and di­verse Parkin­son’s dis­ease port­fo­lio, and aligns with our fo­cus of ac­quir­ing val­ue-en­hanc­ing, clin­i­cal­ly-dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed med­i­cines to treat CNS dis­eases,” said Su­per­nus CEO Jack Khat­tar in a state­ment.

This is not the bio­phar­ma’s first for­ay in­to CNS drugs and ther­a­pies. Just last year, the Mary­land phar­ma paid $300 mil­lion to pick up US WorldMeds’ CNS port­fo­lio of Apokyn, My­obloc and Xada­go, along with an apo­mor­phine in­fu­sion pump. Su­per­nus made head­lines ear­li­er this year when the FDA ap­proved the com­pa­ny’s AD­HD non-stim­u­lant treat­ment Qel­bree.

This lat­est ac­qui­si­tion pro­vides Su­per­nus with two more prod­ucts to mar­ket and sell: Go­cov­ri — an FDA-ap­proved treat­ment for off-time and dysk­i­ne­sia in Parkin­son’s pa­tients re­ceiv­ing lev­odopa ther­a­py, along with Parkin­son’s treat­ment Os­molex.

The deal goes down like this: $8.10 per share that must be paid at clos­ing, with two con­tin­gent val­ue rights (CVRs) col­lec­tive­ly worth $1.00 per share in cash. That brings the to­tal val­ue to $9.10 per share in cash.

The first CVR, worth $0.50 per share, is on­ly payable up­on reach­ing $150 mil­lion in an­nu­al (de­fined as four con­sec­u­tive quar­ters) net sales of Adamas’ Go­cov­ri be­tween now and the end of 2024. The sec­ond $0.50 CVR gets paid out once Su­per­nus sees $225 mil­lion in an­nu­al net sales of Go­cov­ri by the end of 2025. For con­text, net sales of Gov­ocri in all of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were $71.2 mil­lion and $37.7 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly.

While CVRs can be prof­itable, they can al­so be risky for in­vestors — as Cel­gene in­vestors can at­test to af­ter los­ing their pay­outs at the be­gin­ning of the year, af­ter one of their drugs failed to hit its sched­ule for an ap­proval.

Adamas’ stock price soared af­ter the an­nounce­ment, with $ADMS cross­ing $8 in a 73% jump af­ter the bell on Fri­day.

This new deal is ex­pect­ed to close by ear­ly next year, ac­cord­ing to Su­per­nus.

Bayer and Exscientia are winding down their three-year collaboration, leaving the big German pharma to take the AI-designed compounds born out of the pact further.

London-based Exscientia revealed in its Q2 update that the partners have “mutually agreed to end” their collaboration, which kicked off in early 2020, after recently achieving a drug discovery milestone. In an SEC filing, Exscientia said it terminated the pact on May 30, about six months early.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”