Christophe We­ber, Take­da

Take­da has tak­en the next step in its glob­al re­struc­tur­ing, bag­ging Ari­ad Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for $5.2 bil­lion and pay­ing a whop­ping 74% pre­mi­um for its stock.

The deal gives Japan’s Take­da a big­ger can­cer drug port­fo­lio, with an al­ready ap­proved Iclusig on the mar­ket and a loom­ing de­ci­sion on briga­tinib, which Take­da be­lieves has block­buster po­ten­tial.

Ari­ad has been mak­ing progress since long­time CEO Har­vey Berg­er was forced out in the spring of 2015, a move trig­gered by a brew­ing share­hold­er re­volt that broke out af­ter Iclusig was briefly jerked out of the mar­ket and then al­lowed back on with a more lim­it­ed reach. The com­pa­ny fin­ished its rolling sub­mis­sion for briga­tinib last sum­mer, look­ing to get an OK to sell the ALK in­hibitor to pa­tients who no longer re­spond to Pfiz­er’s Xalko­ri.

In ear­ly De­cem­ber Ari­ad, now run by CEO Paris Panayiotopou­los, re­port­ed a me­di­an fol­low-up of 11-months, demon­strat­ed a pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival rate of 15.6 months with a 55% con­firmed ob­jec­tive re­sponse rate for non-small cell lung can­cer pa­tients tak­ing the 180 mg dose briga­tinib.

For Take­da, the buy­out marks an­oth­er step for­ward as it slash­es its R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion and re­groups in the US and Japan, great­ly re­duc­ing its pres­ence in the UK. The deal al­so marks the high val­u­a­tions tied to mar­ket­ed and late-stage drugs. Their fore­cast of $1 bil­lion-plus sales for briga­tinib, though, are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ag­gres­sive than most an­a­lysts, who have been pre­dict­ing $500 mil­lion to $800 mil­lion in sales.

Christophe We­ber, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Take­da, had this to say:

“This is a very ex­cit­ing time for Take­da as we will broad­en our hema­tol­ogy port­fo­lio and trans­form our glob­al sol­id tu­mor fran­chise through the ad­di­tion of two in­no­v­a­tive tar­get­ed ther­a­pies. Op­por­tu­ni­ties to ac­quire such high-qual­i­ty, com­ple­men­tary tar­get­ed ther­a­pies do not come of­ten, and we are very ex­cit­ed about the po­ten­tial for this trans­ac­tion to ben­e­fit pa­tients, our share­hold­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers.”

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.

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.

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.