Dive Brief:
- Novartis on Tuesday said it will pay $1.4 billion to acquire the New York-based biotechnology company Tourmaline Bio and its experimental cardiovascular disease drug.
- Per deal terms, the Swiss pharmaceutical company will pay $48 per Tourmaline share, a 59% premium to the biotech’s stock’s closing price Monday of about $30.
- At the center of the deal is Tourmaline’s anti-inflammatory drug pacibekitug, which the biotech is developing for people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In May, Tourmaline read out Phase 2 study results that showed pacibekitug reduced levels of a biomarker tied to heart risk. While the stock sold off, analysts viewed the data favorably: Leerink Partners’ Thomas Smith described the drug as “differentiated” in a market he views as having multi-billion dollar potential.
Dive Insight:
Tourmaline went public in 2023 via a reverse merger with the struggling cell therapy developer Talaris. The deal gave Tourmaline funds to develop pacibekitug, an antibody that targets interleukin-6, a protein scientists have linked to systemic inflammation.
Tourmaline had licensed the drug from Pfizer the year before, and set to work developing it for both atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which is caused by the build up of plaque on artery walls, and thyroid eye disease.
Should development in cardiovascular disease succeed, pacibekitug could compete with an rival IL-6 inhibitor, ziltivekimab, that’s being advanced by Novo Nordisk. Tourmaline claims its drug could have an edge against Novo’s drug, which is dosed via monthly subcutaneous injection. By comparison, pacibekitug can be administered quarterly.
In a recent interview with PharmaVoice, Tourmaline CEO Sandeep Kulkarni said a longer interval between dosing could help with treatment adherence and patient outcomes.
Novartis seems to agree: “With no widely adopted anti-inflammatory therapies currently available for cardiovascular risk reduction, pacibekitug represents a potential breakthrough in addressing residual inflammatory risk in ASCVD with a differentiated mechanism of action targeting IL-6,” Shreeram Aradhye, Novartis’ head of development and chief medical officer, in a statement.
The companies expect the acquisition to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
