All it requires to come to be an investment target in biotech is some promising data. Take Ewing, NJ, and Vancouver-based Celator Pharmaceuticals, which Jazz Pharmaceuticals just agreed to buy this morning for $1.5 billion.
Celator (NASDAQ: CPXX) was formed in 1999 by a group led by Lawrence Mayer and Marcel Bally, the two veterans of the British Columbia Cancer Agency. The business went public in 2013, and its shares subsequently hovered in between $1 and $5 apiece for much more compared to 2 years. After that in this March, Celator’s CPX-351—a reformulation of the chemotherapy combination of cytarabine and daunorubicin, which is often used to treat acute myeloid leukemia—helped prolong patients’ lives in a Phase 3 trial. Shares zoomed from $1.53 apiece to $8.70 in a day, After that a tape-record high, and have actually stored climbing. Now Jazz will certainly pay $30.25 a discuss in cash, or $1.5 billion, for Celator and its AML drug.
Celator was to file for approval of CPX-351, referred to as Vyxeos, in the U.S. and Europe later this year. However making a drug is permanently various from efficiently launching and selling it, and the latter is frequently finest suited for companies along with those capabilities currently in place. Enter Jazz (NASDAQ: JAZZ). The Dublin-based firm is finest known for the narcolepsy drug sodium oxybate (Xyrem), However has actually a presence in cancer, along with the leukemia drug asparaginase Erwinia chrysanthemi (Erwinase), and hematology, along with defibrotide sodium (Defitelio). Jazz will certainly usage its existing sales pressure to tips carry CPX-351 to the complete line.
“We believe that Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ clinical and commercial understanding in hematology/oncology and existing worldwide infrastructure will certainly tips understand the value of [CPX-351] as a treatment to patients along with AML,” said Celator CEO Scott Jackson, in a statement. “After properly evaluating our strategic options, our board of directors has actually unanimously motivated that this all-money transaction is in the most effective interest of our stockholders.”
Jazz expects to close the deal throughout the 3rd quarter, though a majority of Celator shareholders have actually to tender their shares first. Shareholders owning concerning 18.4 percent of Celator have actually currently agreed to do so.
Celator, meanwhile, has actually additionally been applying its technology—a means of designing combination drug formulations—to others mainstay cancer chemotherapies. Its CPX-1, for instance, is a combination of irinotecan and floxuridine that Celator has actually tested in colorectal cancer. Jazz didn’t claim exactly what its strategies are for that drug or Celator’s others asset, a nanoparticle formulation of docetaxel.
Jazz will certainly hold a conference call later this morning to discuss the deal.
Celator will certainly present much more data from its Phase 3 trial of CPX-351 at 2 medical meetings next month.
