Pharma’s largest recent Biotech M&A deals trace their roots to the Greater New Haven Hub
In light of the current WhereScienceLives campaign, I spent the weekend reviewing the recent deal landscape in the Greater New Haven biotech hub. The biotech innovation engine in this hub no longer needs an introduction — the current class of 21+ pre-clinical companies formed in the last 2 years, 15+ older clinical-stage companies formed in the last 6 years and several dozen medtech and digital health ventures tell that story loud & clear. True to that, biopharma has recently increasingly looked to this hub to revitalize its discovery & commercial pipeline; put simply — some of the largest and most significant deals of 2019 and 2020 trace their roots to the Greater New Haven Biotech hub in CT. American giant Eli Lilly acquired Loxo Oncology (Stamford, CT) in an $8 billion transaction in 2019. British behemoth AstraZeneca acquired Alexion Pharmaceuticals in the year’s largest deal for $39 billion (Alexion was headquartered in New Haven until its recent relocation in mid-2018; maintains a presence in New Haven, CT) . Yes, you read that right — not New York, not San Francisco, not Massachusetts, and certainly not Philadelphia. Below, I provide a basic overview on the transformative nature of these deals.
AstraZenaca’s $39 billion acquisition of Alexion Pharma
When Yale Professor Leonard Bell and his colleague Steven Squinto founded Alexion Pharmaceuticals 29 years ago in Science Park, New Haven, they perhaps had not fully imagined the impact it would have on the global rare disease landscape, let alone be the subject of one biopharma’s biggest deals of the year. Fast-forward to 2021, global pharma juggernaut AstraZeneca paid Alexion shareholders $39bn or $175 per share to acquire the company. The giant will leverage Alexion’s assets to strengthen its presence in immune-mediated diseases.
Alexion pioneered complement inhibition for a “broad spectrum of immune-mediated rare diseases caused by uncontrolled activation of the complement system, a vital part of the immune system” — in so doing, it built a formidable portfolio of 11 molecules and 20+ clinical-development programs. Rare disease, a key anchor point for this biotech hub, is a high-growth area experiencing rapid innovation, in part due to emerging genomic discovery and development “tool kits”. However, there is still a significant unmet medical need. Science Park, New Haven based Rallybio has taken the baton from Alexion with hopes of taking patient-centric innovation in rare disease to new heights.
Eli Lilly’s $8 Billion Acquisition of Loxo Oncology in 2019
In an ITIF podcast interview, Josh Bilenker, founder of Loxo Oncology explained: [we] started as a “small company based in Stanford, Connecticut, that focused on certain genetic drivers of cancer, such that [we] could identify subsets of cancers — lung, breast, thyroid — some of the big ones and some of the smaller ones and identify [genes] that went wrong in the cell to make it become a cancer cell. And [we] built very specific medicines that were designed to inhibit these pathways gone awry.”
Fast forward to 2019, Eli Lilly and Company acquired Loxo Oncology for $235.00 per share in cash, or approximately $8.0 billion, the largest transaction for this biopharma big shot. Loxo Oncology has transformed Eli Lilly’s oncology prospects with a promising portfolio of approved and investigational medicines, including: LOXO-292, a first-in-class oral RET (a member of the tyrosine kinase family) inhibitor that has been granted Breakthrough Therapy designation by the FDA for three indications. LOXO-292 has downstream potential in subtypes of lung and thyroid cancers. The pipeline also features inhibitors against Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) for subtypes of B-cell leukemias and lymphomas.
Loxo’s accomplishments in a span of just 7 years since its founding in 2013 will serve as a inspiration of what’s possible in oncology in this hub — with a healthy dose of good science, clear and early differentiation and lots of luck.
Closing Thoughts
Just a four weeks ago , the hub’s Neurology powerhouse, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, announced its acquisition of full ownership of Science Park-based Kleo Pharmaceuticals with two novel immune modulating platforms: the Multi-targeted Antibody Therapy Enhancer (MATE™) conjugation platform and Antibody Recruiting Molecule (ARM™) platform. If the origins of these potentially transformative deals comes as a surprise to you, then brace yourself for more and get comfortable with the story of this biotech hub.
