Four months after restructuring the ailing Aegerion and axing about 80 staffers, CEO Mary Szela has completed the deal she wanted to bring in a late-stage asset.
Aegerion announced this morning that it will merge with Vancouver-based QLT, creating a new biotech named Novelion that leaves the QLT shareholders with the lion’s share of the stock and Szela with the helm.
An investment syndicate led by Deerfield is also stepping in to inject $22 million into the company through a share purchase agreement. And QLT’s investors will wind up with 67% of the shares of Novelion.
Shares of Aegerion shot up 42% on Wednesday morning.
Aegerion was afflicted by a variety of troubles. Ex-CEO Marc Beer ran into a hornet’s nest of regulatory issues, accused of making unsubstantiated claims about its drug Juxtapid. The drug, meanwhile, fell far short of expectations on the market, and Beer’s messy divorce added a few salacious allegations that helped set the stage for activist investor Alex Denner to push for a change.
That change became Szela, who had left Melinta earlier.
“A late-stage agent would be particularly impactful,” Szela told me earlier in the year as she sought to right a listing ship.
That asset materialized in QLT’s zuretinol (QLT091001) which the companies describe as a Phase III-ready orphan drug targeting inherited retinal disease caused by underlying mutations in RPE65 or LRAT genes, spotlighting Leber Congenital Amaurosis and Retinitis Pigmentosa.
QLT, meanwhile, has experienced its own turmoil. The Canadian biotech has announced and called off two earlier mergers, including a recent pact with Auxilium.
Now Szela will see if she can make one good biotech out of two troubled companies, with its HQ in Canada and its operations in Cambridge, MA. It’s a sizable task.
By John Carroll
Source: Fierce Biotech
Big Pharma has long seen the potential for AI and machine learning to accelerate drug development. But Novo Nordisk is going a step further by channeling $200 million toward the creation of a computer that will outrun anything in existence.
Current methods for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease rely on a complex combination of self- and caregiver-reported symptoms, a physical examination and either a PET scan or a spinal tap to look for evidence of amyloid plaque build-ups in the brain. But a new artificial intelligence-based method may make the diagnostic process a much more objective one.
There is lots of talk about diversity and inclusion in business, including in pharma and medtech. A new report by the Open Political Economy Network (OPEN), a think tank focusing on migration and diversity, released its “Minority Businesses Matter: Europe” report highlighting the successes and challenges of ethnic minority-owned businesses in Europe.
