AstraZeneca has agreed to buy US biotech CinCor in a deal worth up to $1.8bn, as it seeks to expand its pipeline of heart and kidney drugs.
The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker will pay $26 a share, 121 per cent more than CinCor’s $11.78 closing price on Friday. If all the milestones are met, the $1.8bn price would be at a 206 per cent premium.
CinCor suffered a sell-off in November after a phase 2 trial for baxdrostat, a novel treatment that can lower blood pressure, failed to prove that it worked in patients with uncontrolled hypertension.
But the Massachusetts-based company is planning a phase 3 trial, after another phase 2 trial showed that it worked in a different group of patients with treatment-resistant hypertension.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, said the deal “supports our commitment to cardiorenal disease and further strengthens our pipeline with baxdrostat”. AstraZeneca said baxdrostat could also be combined with Farxiga, its drug for chronic kidney disease.
As part of the transaction, AstraZeneca will also acquire the cash and marketable securities on CinCor’s balance sheet, totalling about $522mn.
The acquisition comes at the start of the JPMorgan healthcare conference in San Francisco, the pharmaceutical industry’s largest annual gathering. Analysts are forecasting a year of dealmaking, with large drugmakers making the most of the drop in biotech valuations.