Today, a brief rundown of news involving BridgeBio Pharma and United Therapeutics, as well as updates from Otuska Pharmaceutical and Vertex Pharmaceuticals that you may have missed.
BridgeBio Pharma said Wednesday that Sixth Street Partners and HealthCare Royalty have agreed to provide the San-Francisco-based company with up to $1 billion in preferred equity to advance its commercial launches. The transaction has an initial conversion price of $137.79 per share, representing more than a 100% premium of the company’s average stock price, and will increase to $153.10 per share after five years. Leerink Partners analyst Mani Foroohar said the transaction is “incrementally positive,” but noted the key trade-off is the agreed 7.0% initial preferred dividend. That could be a headwind for the company’s goal to profitability, “but all-in still a lower cost of capital than BridgeBio equity,” Foroohar wrote in a note to clients. Sixth Street funded $800 million, while HealthCare Royalty funded $133.9 million. — Delilah Alvarado
United Therapeutics said Thursday it is spending $140 million up front to acquire Thymmune Therapeutics, a private startup developing a cell therapy to restore function to the diseased thymus gland in people with the rare condition congenital athymia, which results in often-fatal immunodeficiency. Thymmune’s lead treatment, called THY-100, is derived from a process that converts human-induced pluripotent stem cells into thymic cells that mature in the body into types that can help produce working T cells. Thymmune’s investors could receive up to another $160 million in additional payouts based on achievement of certain milestones by 2031. The company emerged from the laboratory of Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2023 with a $7 million seed round that included Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ founding CEO John Maraganore, and gained an additional $37 million in backing from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. — Jonathan Gardner
Otsuka Pharmaceutical said its drug Voyxact achieved positive results in a Phase 3 trial, completing its final dataset to support traditional approval of the treatment for kidney function. The Japan-based company said Wednesday that, when compared to placebo, Voyxact stabilized kidney function and even demonstrated evidence of improvement after two years in people with the rare autoimmune disease IgA nephropathy, or IgAN. The drug gained accelerated approval late 2025 for the reduction of excess protein in the urine of adults with IgAN, and works by blocking a key protein known as APRIL, which plays a role in the development and progression of IgAN. RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams believes the reductions in risk of progression to kidney failure are likely to resonate with physicians and “potentially enable greater uptake” of APRIL-targeting drugs for IgAN. The data will be submitted to regulatory authorities and presented at an upcoming scientific meeting. — Delilah Alvarado
The Food and Drug Administration expanded use of the CRISPR therapy Casgevy for children aged 2 and older with either sickle cell disease or transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia. The expanded approval announced Wednesday makes Casgevy the first and only gene therapy approved for treatment of the blood disorders in those as young as 2. It also opens a wider market for Casgevy’s developer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which has struggled with lagging sales of the therapy due to its strenuous production and timeline for patients. — Delilah Alvarado
