Lon­nie Moul­der, Tesaro CEO

The PARP wars may be about ready to in­spire some fresh M&A ac­tiv­i­ty.

In the wake of Pfiz­er’s big $14 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Medi­va­tion last fall, which in­clud­ed the PARP drug ta­la­zoparib, sources are telling Reuters that Tesaro $TSRO has been field­ing some in­com­ing queries about a buy­out. And with its PARP drug ni­ra­parib un­der re­view at the FDA, Tesaro has be­come one of the most fre­quent­ly cit­ed takeover tar­gets in biotech, where promis­ing late-stage as­sets can be hard to find.

Ni­ra­parib is billed as a like­ly ri­val to As­traZeneca’s Lyn­parza, which got an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval with a thin set of da­ta that the phar­ma gi­ant has been build­ing on. And back in De­cem­ber Clo­vis gained an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for an­oth­er PARP, Rubra­ca (ru­ca­parib).

As we re­port­ed a few days ago, ni­ra­parib sits high on a list of 15 po­ten­tial block­busters ready to hit the mar­ket this year, with 2022 sales rev­enue pro­ject­ed at $1.8 bil­lion for the ovar­i­an can­cer mar­ket.

That’s why an­a­lysts like David Nieren­garten at Wed­bush re­main con­vinced that a deal al­most has to be in the works. He not­ed:

TSRO re­mains our top take­out pick for 2017. We be­lieve TSRO’s pro­file as an on­col­o­gy com­pa­ny with one ap­proved prod­uct (Varu­bi) and a po­ten­tial block­buster in reg­is­tra­tion (ni­ra­parib’s PDU­FA date is June 30, 2017), is at­trac­tive for big phar­ma.

Tesaro’s shares are up 14% Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Tesaro, re­ports Reuters, hasn’t been shop­ping the com­pa­ny. But then again, that’s not how you get the best price for a biotech. That dance gen­er­al­ly in­volves an un­so­licit­ed bid fol­lowed by a tus­sle over val­u­a­tion and hope­ful­ly – from the sell­er’s per­spec­tive – a bid­ding war among ea­ger ri­vals. Sanofi has played that role twice, first boost­ing the val­ue of Medi­va­tion and then help­ing Acte­lion with its ne­go­ti­a­tions with J&J – which end­ed in a $30 bil­lion deal and a spin­out of a new com­pa­ny fo­cused on the pipeline.

Last year proved a dis­ap­point­ment on the M&A side. But with sev­er­al deals done ear­ly in 2017, in­clud­ing Acte­lion, the smart mon­ey is bet­ting on a slate of biotech buy­outs this year.

Blue­bird bio $BLUE has un­veiled its price for the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo (Lenti­Glo­bin), which came as a big sur­prise. And it wasn’t the on­ly un­ex­pect­ed twist in to­day’s sto­ry.

With some an­a­lysts bet­ting on a $900,000 price for the β-tha­lassemia treat­ment in Eu­rope, where reg­u­la­tors pro­vid­ed a con­di­tion­al ear­ly OK, blue­bird CEO Nick Leschly said Fri­day morn­ing that the pa­tients who are suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with their drug over 5 years will be charged twice that — $1.8 mil­lion — on the con­ti­nent. That makes this drug the sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py on the plan­et, just be­hind No­var­tis’ new­ly ap­proved Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion, with an­a­lysts still wait­ing to see what kind of pre­mi­um can be had in the US.

Re­gen­eron’s close­ly-watched bis­pe­cif­ic con­tin­ues to ring up high re­sponse rates

Re­gen­eron’s high-pro­file bis­pe­cif­ic REGN1979 is back in the spot­light at the Eu­ro­pean Hema­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic con­fab. And while the stel­lar num­bers we saw at ASH have erod­ed some­what as more blood can­cer pa­tients are eval­u­at­ed, the re­sponse rates for this CD3/CD20 drug re­main high.

A to­tal of 13 out of 14 fol­lic­u­lar lym­phomas re­spond­ed to the drug, a 93% ORR, down from 100% at the last read­out. In 10 out of 14, there was a com­plete re­sponse. In dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma the re­sponse rate was 57% among pa­tients treat­ed at the 80 mg to 160 mg dose range. They were all com­plete re­spons­es. And 2 of these Cars were for pa­tients who had failed CAR-T ther­a­py.

Em­bat­tled UK fund man­ag­er Neil Wood­ford — who has con­tro­ver­sial­ly blocked in­vestors from pulling out from his flag­ship fund to stem the blood­let­ting, af­ter a slew of dis­ap­point­ed in­vestors fled fol­low­ing a se­ries of sour bets — is now pay­ing the price for his ac­tions via an in­vestor ex­o­dus on an­oth­er fund.

Har­g­reaves Lans­down, which has in the past sold and pro­mot­ed the Wood­ford funds via its re­tail in­vest­ment plat­form, has re­port­ed­ly with­drawn £45 mil­lion — its en­tire po­si­tion — from the in­vest­ment man­ag­er’s In­come Fo­cus Fund.

→ Ab­b­Vie is tout­ing new pos­i­tive da­ta com­par­ing their ag­ing block­buster Hu­mi­ra with their hoped-for block­buster upadac­i­tinib. Over 48 weeks a larg­er pro­por­tion of pa­tients tak­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal drug ex­pe­ri­enced clin­i­cal re­mis­sion than in the con­trol arm with Hu­mi­ra. Their drug brought in $20 bil­lion last year, top­ping the scales in the num­ber 1 slot.

→ Gilead has turned to Van­cou­ver-based Ab­Cellera for its lat­est dis­cov­ery deal. Ab­Cellera will use its know-how in “sin­gle-cell screen­ing of nat­ur­al im­mune sources” to find an­ti­body can­di­dates for Gilead to pur­sue in the in­fec­tious dis­ease field. The deal in­cludes an up­front and mile­stones.

The Wash­ing­ton Post man­aged to whip up the quick­est in­dus­try con­sen­sus I’ve ever seen that one of its re­porters was pur­vey­ing overblown non­sense with a sto­ry that Pfiz­er was sit­ting on da­ta sug­gest­ing that En­brel could be an ef­fec­tive treat­ment for Alzheimer’s. 

In cov­er­ing that bit of an­ti-Big Phar­ma fan­ta­sy — there are lots of rea­sons to go af­ter phar­ma, but this piece was lu­di­crous — I not­ed com­ments in the sto­ry from some promi­nent peo­ple in the field crit­i­ciz­ing Pfiz­er for not pub­lish­ing the da­ta. I sin­gled out Rudy Tanzi at Har­vard and then ap­plied some added crit­i­cism for the things he’s done to hype — in my opin­ion — high­ly ques­tion­able as­sump­tions. You can see it in the link.