While Big Pharmas embarked on a frenzy of acquisitions over recent weeks, Roche\u2019s CEO has explained to Fierce Biotech why the Swiss drugmaker is happy to sit this round out.<\/p>\n
M&A reached a fever pitch in March, with the final 12 days of the month resulting in seven acquisitions with a combined headline value of $29 billion. In fact, the final day of March not only saw Eli Lilly\u00a0offer<\/a>\u00a0$6.3 billion upfront for sleep-focused Centessa Pharmaceuticals, but also Biogen\u00a0agreeing to pay\u00a0<\/a>$5.6 billion for Apellis Pharmaceuticals and its approved drugs Syfovre and Empaveli.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that Roche has been too timid to buy companies in the recent past. The company made a major obesity play by buying\u00a0Carmot\u00a0Therapeutics for $2.7 billion at the end of 2023, and paid $3.5 billion<\/a> last year for 89bio and its phase-3-stage fatty liver disease candidate.<\/p>\n When asked by Fierce why Roche hadn\u2019t joined in the latest spending spree, CEO Thomas Schinecker\u00a0explained that one factor is the company\u2019s wariness of incurring debt.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have done a number of deals over the last couple of years, and basically with the money that we earned, we more than could finance all the deals directly,\u201d Schinecker\u00a0told Fierce on a first-quarter earnings call with journalists Thursday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we kind of spent everything and reinvested that,\u201d he added. \u201cIn a moment where the interest rates are as high as they are, I think it’s also very prudent not to take up that much additional debt.\u201d<\/p>\n Another factor is the fact that\u2014unlike many of its peers\u2014Roche doesn\u2019t feel the pressure of approaching patent cliffs, the CEO said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are companies that definitely have significant patent cliffs ahead, and they are in a much more urgent situation to do significant deals,\u201d he noted. \u201cIf we look at the outlook and the fact that we have almost 19 medicines that could launch by the end of the decade, we don’t see a situation where we’ll ever be in a declining situation, so we can continue our growth momentum in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Those potential launches include obesity assets like enicepatide<\/a>, a GLP-1\/GIP receptor from the Carmot acquisition, and the Zealand-partnered<\/a> long-acting amylin analog petrelintide. There\u2019s also the multiple sclerosis therapy fenebrutinib<\/a>, which will be filed with regulators this year, and the breast cancer drug giredestrant<\/a>, which has already been sent to the FDA.<\/p>\n The final reason for staying clear of the acquisition stampede is down to value for money, according to Schinecker.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, it’s also very important that we don’t overpay,\u201d the CEO told Fierce. \u201cWe want to make sure that we’re very disciplined and \u2026 we’ve always been very good at picking up interesting molecules, but at acceptable prices.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to the drugs already sitting in Roche\u2019s pipeline, the company revealed this morning that it stopped evaluating englumafusp as a potential treatment for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Data from a phase 1b\/2 trial suggested that the CD19 and 4-1BB-targeting fusion protein \u201cdid not meet our criteria to become a transformative medicine for patients replacing the current and future standard of care,\u201d the pharma told Fierce this morning.<\/p>\n Earlier in development, the company also halted work on an anti-leukocyte trafficking antibody, RG6377, due to skin and joint tolerability issues.<\/p>\n Another drug thrown on the scrapheap was alogabat. Roche had been evaluating the drug as a potential treatment for Angelman syndrome, but told Fierce a phase 1 study had suggested the drug was \u201cnot able to even partially normalize the EEG beta-band power and fully address the GABAA receptor-related pathophysiology\u201d of patients with this rare neurogenetic disorder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Big Pharmas embarked on a frenzy of acquisitions over recent weeks, Roche\u2019s CEO has explained to Fierce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[1115,3772,9275,41515,3343,1813,134],"class_list":["post-81052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-biotech","tag-deals","tag-fierce-biotech-homepage","tag-licensing-deals","tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","tag-obesity","tag-roche"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116727998433339252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}