The top 10 hit pa­rade of bio­phar­ma li­cens­ing deals for 2014-2017

The Mer­ck KGaA lo­go stands il­lu­mi­nat­ed at dusk out­side the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters in Darm­stadt, Ger­many, on No­vem­ber 3, 2016 Bloomberg

Bay­er’s re­cent deal to part­ner with Loxo for $400 mil­lion in cash in­spired this lat­est analy­sis of top deals. I thought it would make the top 10, but af­ter re­view­ing the up­front mon­ey paid for li­cens­ing pacts over the past three years, it just bare­ly missed the list you’ll see be­low.

Biobucks re­main the cur­ren­cy of choice in deal­mak­ing, but it’s the hard up­front cash that tells us what kind of drugs are val­ued the high­est. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, that cov­ers three cur­rent­ly mar­ket­ed drugs and sev­en ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­pies for a to­tal of $7.1 bil­lion in down pay­ments.

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