Deals of the Week's Thanksgiving Day Massacre (In 4-Part Harmony, Of Course)

This post is called Deals of the Week, and it's about deals, and the week, but Deals of the Week is not the name of the blog, that's just the name of the post. And that's why I called the post Deals of the Week.

Now it all started four Thanksgivings ago; it was four years ago on Thanksgiving, when Chris Morrison and I started writin' a blog about deals, but not every day, just once a week. And writin' about deals once a week, you know it's a lot of work. (Hint. Hint.)

And there's a lot of garbage you gotta sift through, but we decided it would be a friendly gesture on behalf of readers. So we trolled around the Internet with our shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction (a.k.a. EBI's Strategic Transactions database) looking for deals to analyze. But then a big bad editor (also known as Officer Roger) said why are you doin' that? We are closed on Thanksgiving.

And we had never heard of a blog closed on Thanksgiving before (we don't get out much) so with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to dump our garbage -- I mean our deals.

We didn't find one. So we wrote our post anyway, went back and had a Thanksgiving Day that couldn't be beat, went to sleep, and didn't get up until the next morning when we got a call from Officer Roger... And it's been a recurring feature here at IVB ever since.

But fortunately, not another case of American blind justice since we always arrive at the truth of the matter and it doesn't even require 27 eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

In honor of the day, we hope you consider joining the IN VIVO Blog Movement. All you've got to do is walk into the office wherever you are, just walk in and say ,"You can get anything you want at IN VIVO Blog." And walk out.

You know if one person, just one person does it, they might think he's really sick and they won't take him... And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day (okay, we'd really like 1000) walking in, quoting a line from IN VIVO Blog and walking out?

And friends, they might think its a movement. And that's what it is, the IN VIVO Blog Movement.

Remember Deals of the Week? (This is a post about Deals of the Week.)

Without further ado, we bring you this week's installment. Feel free to sing along in four-part harmony. With feeling. Cuz'...

You can get anything you want at IN VIVO Blog.
You can get anything you want at IN VIVO Blog.
Log right in, it's a click away.
Just a finger tap. You don't have to pay.
You can get anything you want at IN VIVO Blog. (Excepting Roger.)

Convergence/Selcia: Barely more than a month after it was spun out of GlaxoSmithKline, CNS-focused Convergence Pharmaceutical bagged its first drug discovery collaboration, with Essex, UK-based CRO Selcia Ltd. No financials were disclosed, but Convergence isn’t short of cash, having raised $35.4 million on inception in one of Europe’s largest A rounds. Run by CEO Clive Dix, of PowderMed fame, Convergence already has two clinical-stage assets and six earlier-stage programs targeting ion-channels involved in chronic pain. In this deal, the partners will hunt further molecules for chronic pain, with Convergence applying the ion channel biology, medicinal chemistry and preclinical development expertise it inherited from GSK, and Selcia contributing synthetic chemistry and chemistry support services. The collaboration shows that Convergence, like its parent GSK (and indeed many other Big Pharma), is willing to embrace others’ drug discovery approaches, and to tap into drug discovery resources and technology on a flexible basis.--Melanie Senior

Medtronic/Ardian: Back in the summer of 2008, Ardian sought out corporate investors to participate in the company’s targeted $30 million Series C financing, thinking some corporate oomph and expertise would help drive clinical testing of its Symplicity Catheter System, used for treating hypertension and related conditions. The following spring Medtronic led a $47 million round, acquiring 11% of the company in what was – and still is - a rare up round. Now, Medtronic is going all in, announcing that it will acquire the rest of Ardian for $800 million up front, setting a record purchase price for a medical device company that doesn’t have an FDA-approved device. (Medtronic topped the mark it set in 2009 with the $700 million of CoreValve Inc., a percutaneous heart valve company.) Medtronic also agreed to pay commercial milestones equal to the annual revenue growth through the end of Medtronic’s fiscal year 2015. Ardian’s system allows doctors to deliver radiofrequency energy to the renal sympathetic nerves surrounding the renal arteries. Decreasing conduction of these nerves is seen as a way of triggering the body’s own regulation mechanisms to lower blood pressure. For the past six months, Ardian has been releasing positive results from its ongoing clinical trials with the most recent bit of good news at the American Heart Association meeting this month.--Tom Salemi

Boehringer Ingelheim/f-star: Boehringer's R&D collaboration with f-star this week is yet more proof that the privately-held German drug maker is ramping up its large molecule capabilities. This is the fourth antibody deal Boehringer has done this year alone according to Elsevier's Strategic Transactions, building on collaborations with 4-Antibody, Micromet, and most recently MacroGenics. Financial terms of the latest transaction weren't disclosed, but f-star, a former Series A-list all-star that has pulled in more than $25 million in venture dollars, will receive an initial technology access fee, research-based funding, and of course the potential for downstream regulatory and commercial milestones. In return, f-star will use its modular antibody technology to develop novel therapeutics against up to seven targets nominated by Boehringer that span multiple therapeutic areas. Biobucks for each of the seven targets, to which BI of course holds worldwide rights, could total up to €180mm ($247mm), excluding royalties. (Prompting unintentionally hilarious headlines about the "$1.7 billion" deal.) f-star's technology allows it to introduce additional binding sites into antibodies or antibody fragments, engineering large molecules that can target multiple proteins in a single molecule. Note this isn't the first time BI has signed an alliance focused on antibody fragments (that honor goes to Ablynx back in 2007) or bi-specific antibodies (MacroGenics' DART technology competes with f-star). Such second-generation approaches are a means of circumventing established IP claims for successful traditional antibody therapeutics and may advantages over Mother Nature's molecules, as they are potentially easier to manufacture and can have greater tissue penetration.--EFL

GlaxoSmithKline/Dr. Reddy's: GlaxoSmithKline's deal with Dr. Reddy's for the big pharma's United States oral penicillin facility and product portfolio is an interesting spin on regional deal making. Under the terms of the agreement, GSK transfers ownership of its penicillin manufacturing site in Tennessee and U.S. rights to Augmentin and Amoxil brands to Dr. Reddy's for an undisclosed sum. That GSK would opt to sell out of the US penicillin market isn't too surprising. Back in 2008 the drug maker announced plans to lay off the 200+ workers employed at the 400,00-square-foot manufacturing site by fall 2009 in preparation for sale of the plant because of declining sales of Augmentin stateside as a result of generic competition. Thus, the deal makes everyone happy, allowing GSK to downsize in a market no longer deemed valuable, while still allowing the drug maker to preserve ownership RoW, where GSK sees the potential for growth via its branded generics strategy. Dr. Reddy's, meanwhile, has been angling to scale up its generics business in North America. Thus, this deal gives the India-based giant entree into the US penicillin-containing antibacterial segment and a physical footprint to boot.--EFL

Roche/Ligand: Around the same time Roche decided to close out its R&D work in RNA interference, the Swiss pharma also notified Ligand Pharmaceuticals that it was ending a partnership to develop RG7348 (formerly MB11362) for hepatitis C. This no-deal officially ends the circuitous relationship between La Jolla, Calif.-based Ligand and the Swiss pharma. The tie-up began in August 2008, when Roche paid $10 million upfront to initiate a two-year collaboration with Metabasis Therapeutics to apply the latter firm’s HepDirect platform to Roche’s lead nucleoside candidates for HCV. In June 2009, the two companies chose ‘7348, which had since advanced to Phase I, as their lead candidate, with Roche paying a $2 million milestone to the biotech. Fast-forward to October 2009, when Ligand bought out Metabasis, inheriting the HCV deal. Since Ligand/Metabasis, Roche has paid up another $6.5 million in milestones; for the bean counters in the audience, $2.7 million of that went to Metabasis shareholders who had received contingent value rights in the original sale. Ligand, which says it learned of Roche’s decision on Nov. 19, also completed a one-for-six reverse stock split that same day, reducing current outstanding shares of common stock from 117.7 million to 19.6 million. Despite the no-deal, Ligand still boasts partnerships a plenty, boasting of ongoing alliances with Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other.—Joseph Haas

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM IVB!