Eli Lilly to purchase Loxo Oncology for $8bn
American pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Company has announced a deal to acquire Loxo Oncology in a $8 billion deal.
The takeover was announced in a press release issued today, January 7. Eli Lilly will purchase the company for a purchase price of $235 per share.
Loxo is a biopharmaceutical company which develops drugs for genomically defined cancers. The latest move comes as Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical firms seek to expand their cancer drug pipelines.
In May last year, Eli Lilly purchased two cancer therapy developers, Montreal-based AurKa Pharma, and US firm Armo Biosciences.
On Friday, January 3, LSIPR reported that Bristol-Myers Squibb had agreed the purchase of cancer drug manufacturer Celgene for $74 billion.
Loxo’s portfolio includes a number of gene inhibition therapies designed to treat specific cancers, including Loxo-292, Loxo-305, Vitravki and Loxo-195. In a press release, Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer at Eli Lilly, said that using targeted medicines of this kind “to target key tumour dependencies offers an increasingly robust approach to cancer treatment”.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted Loxo-292 “breakthrough therapy” designation. Breakthrough therapies are drugs with the potential to significantly improve the treatment of serious or life-threatening conditions. They are expedited through the FDA’s approval process.
Loxo-292 is used to target cancers with alterations to the rearranged during transfection (RET) kinase, the press release said. Mutations of the RET enzyme are associated with certain types of cancer, including some lung and thyroid cancers.
"Tumour genomic profiling is becoming standard-of-care, and it will be critical to continue innovating against new targets, while anticipating mechanisms of resistance to available therapies,” said Josh Bilenker, CEO at Loxo.
The purchase is expected to be finalised by the end of the first quarter in 2019. Closure of the deal is subject to regulatory approval.
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