Sector News

Categories

Borderless Insights

Image
Negotiating Terms with a New Employer
Image
Beyond Flowers and Platitudes: Reclaiming the Essence of International Women’s Day
Image
Visionary or ‘Stuck-in-the-Mud’? Where are you on Workplace Flexibility?

AstraZeneca divests gastrointestinal drug for $215 million

July 9, 2015
Life sciences
AstraZeneca struck a further “externalization” deal on Thursday to help fill its short-term revenue gap by divesting its gastrointestinal drug Entocort for $215 million.
 
The British drugmaker, which has high hopes for its new drug pipeline but faces declining sales as older products lose patent protection, said rights to Entocort outside the United States would be acquired by Tillotts Pharma, part of the Zeria Group.
 
Entocort, or budesonide, is used to treat patients with mild to moderate Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. It is sold in more than 40 countries and had sales of $53 million outside the United States in 2014.
 
The transaction is expected to complete in the second half of 2015 and AstraZeneca said it would reinforce its strategic focus on selected therapy areas, such as cancer, respiratory disease and diabetes.
 
Chief Executive Pascal Soriot argues that spinning off non-core businesses like Entocort will help the company’s finances and allow it to invest for the future, but some analysts are worried about its reliance on such deals.
 
The issue came to a head in April when AstraZeneca said it was getting a $450 million windfall by letting Celgene develop a prized immunotherapy drug for blood cancers.
 
Soriot has also struck cash-generating externalization deals with Eli Lilly in Alzheimer’s and with Daiichi Sankyo for a new constipation drug.
 
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Pravin Char)

comments closed

Related News

April 20, 2024

CureVac and MD Anderson Cancer Center partner to develop new cancer vaccines

Life sciences

CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.

Read more
April 20, 2024

FUJIFILM plans $1.2 billion investment in major US manufacturing facility

Life sciences

FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.

Read more
April 20, 2024

Sanofi cuts staff in Belgium as early-stage research dwindles

Life sciences

Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.

Read more
More news

How can we help you?

We're easy to reach