Takeda Aims At BMS’s Sotyktu In $4bn Deal For Nimbus’s TYK2 Inhibitor

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. will go after Bristol Myers Squibb Company and its recently approved oral TYK2 inhibitor Sotyktu for moderate-to-severe psoriasis, agreeing on 13 December to pay Nimbus Therapeutics, Inc. an eye-opening $4bn up front for a Phase IIb asset from the same class, NDI034858, with plans to take it into Phase III in psoriasis next year and potentially a host of other autoimmune indications down the road.

The deal continues a string of lucrative deals for in-house discovered assets by privately held Nimbus, which focuses on computational drug discovery. In 2016, it signed a deal with Gilead Sciences, Inc. for a non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) candidate worth up to $1.2bn, with $400m up front, and it has also inked asset transactions and collaborations with Genentech, Inc. , Celgene Corporation and most recently with Eli Lilly and Company