GSK is closing in on a billion-dollar deal for the biotech to develop a drug for rare tumors
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GSK is closing in on a billion-dollar deal to buy a US biotech company developing a drug for rare gastrointestinal tumors, as the British drugmaker rushes to expand its oncology business.
The UK group is in advanced talks to buy privately held biotech IDRx, which has venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and RA Capital as well as private equity giant Blackstone among its backers, according to people close to the discussions. The biotech, which was last valued at $430 million in a funding round in August, could be sold for as much as $1 billion, the people added.
The sale is likely to be announced before next week’s JPMorgan healthcare conference in San Francisco, where a host of biotech deals are typically unveiled, the people said, but added that negotiations were ongoing and the deal could fall through or another buyer could emerge.
GSK declined to comment.
IDRx is conducting early-stage trials of its targeted therapy for patients with a type of cancer called gastrointestinal stromal tumor, or Gist, which affects between 4,000 and 6,000 people in the US each year.
Available treatments for Gist are not very effective because of the cancer’s resistance mutations in 80 percent of cases. IDRx’s experimental drug has shown early signs of addressing this problem.
In the first phase of the trial in patients who had already tried two other treatments that had stopped working, IDRx stopped the growth of their tumors for 12.9 months.
The acquisition of IDRx would help GSK expand its oncology business, which is smaller than rivals such as Merck and AstraZeneca.
The U.K. drugmaker has prioritized strong acquisitions of about $1 billion, in part because it has a smaller deals budget than many of its peers. But is it also in line with current industry trends: 2024 most pharmacy groups avoided bigger jobs in favor of smaller acquisitions.
GSK’s cancer drug sales rose 94 percent year-on-year to more than $1 billion in the first three quarters of 2024. This includes the contribution of Ojjaara, which the company acquired as part of its Acquisition of Sierra Oncology for $1.7 billion in 2022.
This year, GSK hopes to bring back another drug, Blenrep, for a type of blood cancer, to the US market after voluntarily withdrawing the treatment in 2022 after failing to beat rivals in a trial.
announced GSK new results for the drug in November, reporting “statistically significant and clinically significant” effects for Blenrep when used with another established treatment.
In oncology, GSK is building a portfolio of “antibody drug conjugates,” a new type of chemotherapy that aims to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. Late last year, it signed a deal worth up to $975 million with Shanghai-based Duality Bio for an antibody drug conjugate to treat gastrointestinal cancer, its third ADC deal in 18 months.
