The Burrill Report


Daiichi Sankyo, Japan’s third largest drug company, is acquiring privately-held Plexxikon for $805 million in upfront cash and $130 million more based on near-term launch milestones tied to Plexxikon’s late-stage experimental therapy for malignant melanoma.

The acquisition of the Berkeley, California-based biotech is in line with Daiichi Sankyo’s strategy to address diverse unmet medical needs, including personalizing medicine to maximize patient benefits. Plexxikon’s experimental cancer drug PLX4032 is a targeted therapeutic designed to be administered to patients likely to respond to treatment on the basis of a companion diagnostic test that can detect the presence of a specific genetic mutation.

Interim results from a late-stage trial of PLX4032, which is being developed in partnership with Roche, showed that it met its co-primary endpoints of overall survival and progression-free survival among patients with previously untreated metastatic melanoma expressing the BRAF mutation.

Plexxikon and Roche expect to file for market approval in the United States and Europe this year, along with a filing for a companion diagnostic also being co-developed by the partners. Earlier this year, Plexxikon announced an agreement to co-promote PLX4032 in the United States with Roche’s U.S. oncology division Genentech. Daiichi Sankyo will retain the U.S. co-promotion rights following the acquisition.

“This deal made a lot of sense to Daiichi,” Kathleen Sereda Glaub, Plexxikon’s president, told Bloomberg in an interview, noting that the ability to co-market PLX4032 “presented them with a near-term opportunity to jump-start what they wanted to do in oncology.”

The deal follows other Japanese pharma moves into the oncology market, including Astellas’ acquisition of OSI Pharmaceuticals in May 2010 and the recent acquisition of UK cancer drugmaker Pro Strakan Group by Kyowa Hakka Kirin for $474 million.

Cancer drug sales are forecast to grow 12 to 15 percent annually, according to IMS Health. In addition, the strong yen versus the dollar has made U.S. acquisitions attractive for Japanese pharmaceutical companies seeking growth outside their home-base where sales are forecast to grow at an anemic one to 1.4 percent, according to Datamonitor.

Besides PLX4032, Daiichi Sankyo will get a pipeline of oncology compounds and a scaffold-based drug discovery platform.

Plexxikon will operate as a stand-alone unit of Daiichi Sankyo, and all its employees have been asked to stay. Closure of the transaction is subject to regulatory clearance and is expected to conclude promptly thereafter.



March 04, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-daiichi_sankyo_acquires_plexxikon.html