Juno Therapeutics shares soared more than 50 percent in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal reported the biotech company is in talks to be acquired by Celgene.
Shares of Juno rose $26.71 to $72.31 in premarket trading on Wednesday morning. The Seattle-based company had a market share of about $5.2 billion as of Tuesday.
Celgene is seeking to broaden its portfolio of blood-cancer drugs before Revlimid, its top-selling drug, loses its patent protection, The Journal noted. Juno’s approach is focused on developing treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight cancer.
The acquisition discussions could result in a deal within weeks, although it’s unclear how much Celgene would pay for Juno, The Journal added.
Source: CBS News
The company plans to pour more than $500 million in additional funds into its active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Raheen, Limerick County, the country’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) said. The new funding brings the company’s total investment in the site to 927 million euros ($1 billion).
“If in 2005 someone told you that two-thirds of our industry would be driven on the R&D side by emerging biopharma—it would be unthinkable. If one were to project that trend forward, what it would suggest is that we could have a day when we do this talk, say in 2027 or 2028, where 80% of the industry’s pipeline is coming from emerging companies.”
The German healthcare and agrochemicals giant told Reuters that in future its pharma pipeline will focus on cardiovascular disease, neurology, rare diseases and immunology, while de-emphasizing women’s health, a field it first focused on with the acquisition of the former women’s health specialist Schering in 2006.
