In a big step to­ward its $10 bil­lion di­vest­ment goal, Take­da struck a deal to sell its Japan­ese con­sumer health­care busi­ness, known for over-the-counter prod­ucts, to US pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm Black­stone Group.

Take­da Con­sumer Health­care Com­pa­ny was priced at around ¥242 bil­lion ($2.28 bil­lion), though that val­ue will be ad­just­ed to ac­count for net debt and work­ing cap­i­tal, ac­cord­ing to Take­da.

The deal — ex­pect­ed to close by the end of March 2021 —is part of Take­da’s plan to shed $10 bil­lion in non-core as­sets to bal­ance out debt in­curred in the com­pa­ny’s $62 bil­lion Shire ac­qui­si­tion. The buy­out made Take­da a top 10 in­ter­na­tion­al drug com­pa­ny, but al­so sad­dled it with a re­port­ed $48 bil­lion in net debt. Fol­low­ing the ac­qui­si­tion, Take­da shift­ed its fo­cus to the fol­low­ing five ar­eas: gas­troen­terol­o­gy (GI), rare dis­eases, plas­ma-de­rived ther­a­pies, on­col­o­gy and neu­ro­science.

Black­stone will gain a port­fo­lio of OTC drugs and prod­ucts which raked in a to­tal rev­enue of ¥60 bil­lion ($567 mil­lion) last year, in­clud­ing Ali­namin, TCHC’s top-sell­ing prod­uct.

This is Take­da’s fourth deal this year to sell off non-core as­sets. It al­so agreed to di­vest as­sets in Asia-Pa­cif­ic to Cell­tri­on for up to $278 mil­lion in June; to Eu­ro­pean Ori­farm for up to $670 mil­lion in April; and to Latin-Amer­i­can Hy­pera Phar­ma for $825 mil­lion in March. And less than a month ago, Take­da be­gan of­fer­ing ear­ly re­tire­ment to Japan­ese em­ploy­ees.

Last No­vem­ber, Take­da spelled out a five-year plan for 14 growth brands with 20 po­ten­tial added in­di­ca­tions, in­clud­ing budes­onide, its po­ten­tial eosinophilic esophagi­tis drug, and TAK-788, a sec­ond-line drug for non-small cell lung can­cer.

“TCHC played an im­por­tant role in Take­da’s long his­to­ry, but with our growth strat­e­gy now fo­cused on five key busi­ness ar­eas – Gas­troen­terol­o­gy (GI), Rare Dis­eases, Plas­ma-De­rived Ther­a­pies, On­col­o­gy and Neu­ro­science – and an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive con­sumer health care mar­ket in Japan, the own­er­ship tran­si­tion will ben­e­fit both TCHC and Take­da,” Take­da pres­i­dent and CEO Christophe We­ber said in a state­ment.

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo think they’ve struck gold with their next-gen ADC drug Enhertu, which has shown some striking data in late-stage breast cancer trials and early solid tumor tests. Getting into earlier patients is now the goal, starting with Enhertu’s complete walkover of a Roche drug in second-line breast cancer revealed Saturday.

Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by a whopping 72% (p=<0.0001) compared with Roche’s ADC Kadcyla in second-line unresectable and/or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients who had previously undergone treatment with a Herceptin-chemo combo, according to interim data from the Phase III DESTINY-Breast03 head-to-head study presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Everest Medicines is on a roll with two licensing deals in one week.

The Shanghai-based biotech has paid Sinovent and SinoMab $12 million upfront for the rights to a BTK inhibitor for renal diseases, the company announced Thursday. The deal comes just days after Everest came away with rights to a Covid-19 vaccine in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

Everest will pay Sinovent and SinoMab up to $549 million in milestone payments and royalties. The agreement includes tech transfer of Sinovent and SinoMab’s manufacturing process for the candidate, named XNW1011.

One Spanish biotech is beefing up its plasma therapy operations, and on Friday, it announced that it’s doing so in a billion-dollar deal.

Grifols is now the largest shareholder of Biotest, a company valued at more than $1.8 billion. By teaming up, the two will try to increase the number of plasma therapies available and increase patient access around the world, Grifols said in a press release.

The company did so by acquiring holding company Tiancheng Pharmaceutical, the Germany-based owner of nearly 90% of Biotest shares, for nearly $1.27 billion. Grifols now owns nearly 90% of Biotest voting rights and almost 45% of the total share capital of Biotest.