Biopharmaceutical Deal Analysis 2020: Acquisitions breakthrough under the epidemic

As the COVID-19 epidemic swept the world in the first quarter of 2020, with responses mainly to social isolation and public space blocking, global business transaction trends began to change, including first-time collaboration between competitors, previously never-before-seen types of deals, and deals in record time.
, supported by the biotechnology database DearForma, the sub-issue of Nature summarizes transactions in the pharmaceutical sector in 2020, particularly in the area of respiratory diseases.
overall, with the exception of a handful of people who can cope quickly with COVID-19, the pharmaceutical industry's trading trends have all but stalled and the number of mergers and acquisitions has declined as the global economy stagnated in March and April.
but with the removal of some of the restrictions, the number of mergers and acquisitions began to pick up and increase.
venture capital remains active throughout 2020, with investments in treatments such as immuno-oncology (IO) continuing to flourish even during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 22% increase in the number of IO drugs being developed compared to 2019.
high-value licensing transactions have increased since May as some of the blockades have been lifted and transactions between biopharmaceutical companies have accelerated.
July, AstraZenecom signed the most valuable 2020 deal with Phase 13 to develop and sell DS-1062, an antibody-drug binding (ADC) targeted at TRAP2, which is in phase 1 clinical development for a variety of tumor types, including lung and breast cancer (Table 1).
AstraZeneta made an advance payment of $1 billion to First Third and pledged up to $5 billion in business and sales milestone payments.
Table 1: Top 10 Biopharmaceutical Therapy and Platform Research and Development Partnerships 2020 by Transaction Value As shown in Table 1, many of this year's high-value deals have focused on oncology.
's second-largest deal is a partnership between Mercer East and Seattle Genetics, renamed Seagen, in October for the development of Ladiratuzumab vedotin, an ADC drug targeted at LIV1 to treat solid tumors, including breast cancer.
deal also involves Mercedon's $1 billion acquisition of Seagen's stake, with subsequent milestone payments expected to be worth up to $2.6 billion.
ADC drugs, dual-specific antibodies are another recently-watched research and development platform and the focus of this year's third-largest deal.
Among them, AbbVie agreed to pay Genmab an advance of $750 million and a milestone payment of up to $3.15 billion to jointly develop the latter's leading dual-specific antibody candidate, epcoritamab, which is currently in the phase 1/2 clinical study phase of the treatment of blood cancer.
addition to oncology, there are high-value deals focused on neurodegenerative diseases, all involving biopharmaceutical company Biogen.
In February, Yan Jian announced a $2.7 billion deal to license, develop and commercialize Sangamo Therapeutics' preclinical gene-regulated therapies for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
August, Yan Jian and Denali Therapeutics reached a $2.1 billion agreement to jointly develop a small molecule drug for Parkinson's disease for mutations in the LRRK2 gene, including a small molecule LRRK2 inhibitor, DNL151, in phase 1 of the study.
slow-starting mergers and acquisitions began to accelerate the pharmaceutical industry's activity in 2020 with a steady start, but the number was significantly lower than in the first quarter of 2019, and there were few large mergers and acquisitions.
over time, the number of mergers and acquisitions began to pick up.
's biggest acquisition of the year came in September, when Gilead paid $21bn for Immunomedics to acquire the ADC drug Trodelvy, which targets TRP2.
the drug is a competitor to the drug DS-1062, but was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer (Table 2).
: Top 10 Biopharmaceutical Mergers and Acquisitions by 2020 In October, BMS bought myoKardia, a cardiovascular treatment company, for $13 billion, giving BMS access to MyoKardia's main drug candidate, Mavacamten.
is currently in the advanced stages of development for the treatment of hypertrophomyopathy and is expected to be submitted to the FDA for approval in 2021.
post-research and development assets in the field of immunology have also contributed to other mergers and acquisitions.
Janssen Pharmaceuticals signed the third-highest-value acquisition deal of the year when it acquired the autoimmune disease candidate nipocalimab, an anti-FcRn monoclonal antibody that has completed Phase 2 trials to treat severe muscle weakness.
predicted that the antibody has huge market potential.
addition, Sanofi's $3.7 billion acquisition of Principia Biopharma adds a range of candidates to its autoimmune disease product line, including the BTK inhibitor rilzabrutinib, which is undergoing Phase 3 trials.
palforzia, the first oral immunotherapy approved for peanut allergy, was undoubtedly a key driver of Nestle's $2.6 billion acquisition of Aimmune Therapeutics in August.
signed a number of major medical device mergers this year, including Teladoc and Livongo Health's $18.5 billion merger in virtual healthcare.
particularly important given the challenges COVID-19 brings to personal medical care.
, an expert in telemedicme, announced the merger in August and was completed by the end of October.
three of the top five medical device acquisitions by 2020 were for cancer diagnosis, the largest of which was Siemens Medical Systems' $16.4bn all-cash acquisition of Varian Medical Systems, a cancer systems and software company.
to seize the COVID-19 Special Period 2020, many partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry were established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccine development, diagnosis, treatment, testing and management of COVID-19.
partnership began in the first quarter of this year, as early as January, when the Alliance for Epidemic Prevention and Innovation, a U.S. civil society organization, worked with the likes of Modelna and Curevac to fund the development of their respective vaccine candidates.
, the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency also funded a number of pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccine candidates.
's strong growth in the number of co-op deals for COVID-19 at the end of the first quarter prompted Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline to join forces for the first time to combine Sanofi's hedgehog antigens with GlaxoSmithKline's ad technology.
also signed a series of candidate vaccine partnerships in the first half of this year that are now close to or completed phase 3 clinical studies, including the adenovirus vector vaccine development signed by AstraZeneta and Oxford University in April, and the mRNA-based vaccine development signed by Pfizer and BioNTech in March.
Pfizer's vaccine is now a global leader, has been urgently licensed to use in the UK, and will be reviewed by the FDA's board on December 10. cooperation on
antibody candidates has also been outstanding, such as Regeneron's agreement with the U.S. government's Opera Warp Speed program to provide the antibody candidate drug REGEN-COV2, and its agreement with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for COVID-19 prevention trials.
partnership to help address COVID-19 and accelerate the development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the field of respiratory diseases has led to a decline in the number of transactions in some therapeutic areas, but the volume of transactions in the field of respiratory diseases has increased significantly, as COVID-19 infections can lead to serious respiratory diseases and exacerbate existing diseases in patients such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
, more than 300 cooperation agreements related to respiratory diseases have been signed worldwide since the beginning of 2020, many of them focused on COVID-19, according to DataForma.
, there are only 44 deals in the respiratory disease sector announced in 2019.
most of the signed respiratory diseases partnerships are in the research and development platform/discovery phase (Figure 1), as these pharmaceutical companies want to develop vaccine candidates and antibody therapies based on the latest knowledge about the virus.
most protocols are for vaccines, followed by small molecules, antibodies, and diagnostic tools (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Types of Respiratory Diseases by Research and Development Stage (January 2019-October 2020) (IND refers to new drugs under development) Figure 2: Respiratory Disease Trading Events by Major Technology Types (2) January 2019-October 2020) - The deal also includes genomics and gene editing As COVID-19, a number of small and medium-sized biotechnology companies have signed cooperation agreements related to respiratory diseases (Table 3), and some companies are not fully focused on respiratory disease research.
Oneness Biotech has granted LEO Pharmaceuticals the right to develop and commercialize FB825 globally, a monoclonal antibody that targets membranes combined with IgE in a deal with a potential value of $610 million.
LEO Pharmaceuticals will take over the development responsibility for FB825, which Oneness is conducting in a Phase 2a trial for specific dermatitis, while another Phase 2a trial for allergic asthma has been completed.
another deal worth about $268 million, Curadev granted Bayer the right to develop its small molecule STING antagonists for the treatment of lung, cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases.
3: Key transactions in the respiratory field by value for 2020 have also been signed.
Vertex has teamed up with Modelna to develop and commercialize lipid nanoparticles and magnetic resonance RNA to provide gene editing therapy for cystic fibrosis in a deal valued at $455 million.
the deal, Moderna will develop lipid nanoparticle delivery systems and mRNAs, and Vertex will be responsible for the preclinical, clinical development and commercialization of the therapy.
In addition, in March, Vir Biotechnology and Alylam Pharmaceuticals signed an undisclosed cooperation agreement to explore the development of "inhaled RNA" that focuses on lung-targeted small interfering RNA bindings for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus.
: 1.Biopharma deals of 2020 break through 2.Immuno-oncology drug development forges on despite COVID-19 3.Mist begins to clear for lung delivery of RNA