The Burrill Report

Takeda Pharmaceuticals is acquiring privately held URL Pharma for an $800 million upfront and future performance-based contingent earn out payments. It is the third major U.S. life sciences acquisition by a Japanese company so far this year as Japanese companies continue to look for overseas acquisitions.

The deal for the 66-year-old Philadelphia based pharmaceutical, the third acquisition for Takeda in less than a year, gives the Japanese drug giant a company with nearly $600 million in revenues in 2011. It follows Takeda’s $13.7 billion deal for Swiss biopharmaceutical Nycomed in May 2011 and its $310 million buy of U.S. biotech Intellikine in December.

“This acquisition expands Takeda’s gout treatment portfolio and leverages our expertise in primary care,” says Douglas Cole, president, Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A. “Gout affects more than eight million Americans, and the prevalence of gout is rising.” The acquisition secures for Takeda URL’s lead product, Colcrys, which was approved in late 2009 to treat and prevent gout flares. It had sales of more than $430 million in 2011. It also adds Uloric, a drug used to lower blood uric acid levels in adults with gout, to Takeda’s product line-up.

Japanese companies have been actively buying overseas firms to expand their market reach, accounting for $21.1 billion in acquisitions in 2011 and another $5.6 billion so far this year that included two of the biggest deals of the first quarter—Dainippon Sumitomo’s acquisition of Boston Biomedical and Asahi Kasei’s purchase of Zoll Medical.

Dublin-based Shire is looking to become a leader in regenerative medicine with the acquisition of most of the assets of Pervasis Therapeutics, a tiny privately-held biotech based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that has an endothelial cell technology and a mid-stage clinical candidate. Pervasis will keep its pre-clinical non-vascular assets. The deal, reportedly worth about $200 million, includes an upfront payment plus potential milestone payments.

Pervasis’ lead program, Vascugel, is being developed to treat acute vascular repair in patients with end-stage renal disease that are undergoing dialysis. It is the same patient population that often suffers from diabetic foot ulcers. Shire’s big foray into regenerative medicine a year ago, when it bought Advanced BioHealing for $750 million, gave it the diabetic foot ulcer product Dermagraft.

“There are currently no approved therapies that directly target the underlying physiological processes associated with the creation of arteriovenous access sites in hemodialysis patients, including inflammation, thrombosis, and restenosis, says Kevin Rakin, president of Shire Regenerative Medicine. “As a result, there remains a significant unmet need for technologies that improve hemodialysis access for patients with ESRD. We believe Vascugel has the potential to enhance the rate of blood vessel repair while also providing for increased maintenance of the access site for a prolonged period of time as compared to current treatments. This acquisition marks a very important step for Shire in building a regenerative medicine business focused on tissue repair and regeneration.”

Vascugel is an endothelial cell-based therapy that utilizes adult allogeneic endothelial cells embedded into a polymer matrix, and is placed on the outside of the blood vessel at the arteriovenous access site during the surgical intervention to create the access. It has received orphan product designations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medical Agency.

Besides Vascugel, Shire will also get PVS-10200, a clinical stage investigational product being studied in the prevention of resenosis in patients with peripheral arterial disease undergoing angioplasty or a stent procedure.




April 13, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-takeda_acquires_url_pharma_in_800_million_deal.html