AstraZeneca ‘has value’ says former Pfizer lawyer

AstraZeneca’s portfolio does not appear to offer a long pipeline of marketed products with long periods of exclusivity, says Jason Rutt, head of the patents group at Rouse in London and former head of Pfizer’s UK patent department.

Speaking to LSIPR after Pfizer today (April 28) confirmed its interest in merging with the UK-based pharmaceutical company, he said AstraZeneca “has a reasonable number of products that are off-patent, or that will go off-patent fairly shortly, and I can see that there’s value there for Pfizer.”

However, AstraZeneca appears to have boosted its research and development portfolio, and has a good oncology pipeline, he said.

“Something that seems understated is that AstraZeneca has some fairly good Alzheimer’s medicines in development, and Alzheimer’s was seen as a very attractive target within Pfizer.

“Pfizer’s real strength was as a late-stage development and marketing company,” Rutt said, adding that if the deal were to go ahead, it would get “some good late-stage candidates.”

Concluding a month of big pharma mergers, and a week after the news was reported by the Sunday Times, Pfizer confirmed it had submitted an indication of interest to AstraZeneca’s board of directors regarding a possible merger transaction in January.

It added that after “limited high-level discussions,” AstraZeneca declined to pursue negotiations, and discussions between the companies were stopped.

Pfizer contacted AstraZeneca again on April 26 seeking to renew discussions, although AstraZeneca again “declined to engage”, Pfizer said.

“Pfizer believes the possible combination would create a highly complementary mapping of products, pipeline and operating assets to Pfizer’s new operating structure,” the company said on Monday, including boosting its oncology portfolio in areas including lung cancer and breast cancer.

Pfizer said that it is currently considering its options.

Rutt told LSIPR that Pfizer’s bid was “intriguing”, and unusual for the company, which tends to close transactions that are more like “takeovers than mergers”.

“Pfizer has always bought big companies that had products it really wanted,” he said.