Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG agreed on Sunday to buy InterMune Inc — which sells a drug to treat a deadly lung disease — for US$8.3 billion, as pharmaceutical companies continue to seek new products to bolster their offerings.
The price of US$74 per share represents a 38 percent premium to InterMune’s closing price on Friday last week and a 63 percent premium to the price on Aug.12, before media outlets reported that InterMune might be acquired.
The acquisition was announced during a flurry of pharmaceutical deals and attempted deals. About US$87 billion in pharmaceutical acquisitions were made in the first half of this year, eclipsing the total for the whole of last year, according to the research company Evaluate. The total for the first half does not include the US$54 billion acquisition of Shire PLC by AbbVie Inc, which was formally announced last month.
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InterMune, based in Brisbane, California, has one product on the market: a drug called pirfenidone to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a fatal scarring of the lungs.
InterMune, which is still not profitable, sells pirfenidone under the name Esbriet in Europe and Canada, where it received regulatory approval in 2011 and 2012. The drug could receive approval in the US by Nov. 23.
Sales of Esbriet were US$35.7 million in the second quarter, but analysts expect annual revenues to eventually exceed US$1 billion.
“We are obviously focused on high unmet medical needs and looking for medicines that make a significant difference clinically, and this clearly fits that bill,” Roche pharmaceuticals division chief operating officer Daniel O’Day said in an interview on Sunday.
He said the acquisition would strengthen Roche’s portfolio of drugs for respiratory diseases. That has not been a major business for a company mainly known for its cancer treatments.
In the last couple of months, Roche has announced some smaller acquisitions, agreeing to pay at least US$725 million for Seragon Pharmaceuticals, which is developing breast cancer drugs, and at least US$250 million for Santaris Pharma, which develops drugs that work by affecting ribonucleic acid.
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which has no known cause, affects between 70,000 and 200,000 US citizens, according to estimates.
As scarring builds up in the lungs, people gradually lose the ability to breathe. Death often occurs two to five years after diagnosis.
No treatments are approved for use in the US, though steroids and some other drugs are used off label and a relatively small number of patients can receive lung transplants.
However, Esbriet, if it is approved, probably would not have the market to itself for long because Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim has also applied for approval of a drug called nintedanib.
Both drugs slow the decline in lung function, according to papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine in May. Evidence from clinical trials indicates that pirfenidone can also help patients live longer, though it is not clear if the evidence is strong enough for that to be listed on the drug’s label if it is approved.
O’Day said data from the latest clinical trial, published in May, drew Roche’s interest. He said his company approached InterMune late last month.
The merger is expected to be finalized by the end of the year. O’Day declined to say if there would be layoffs, though he said the main purpose of the merger was “growth synergies.”
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