M & A

This week, J&J announced that it was buying heart failure device firm V-Wave; Procept got the FDA’s OK on a clinical trial of its Aquablation treatment for prostate cancer; and CMS began to consider Medicare reimbursement of Abbott’s TriClip tricuspid repair device.

The biopharma industry posted 22 mergers and acquisitions during the third quarter, according to Evaluate, for a total of $8.2bn. Those tallies marked a second consecutive quarter of decline.

Italian personal care and beauty manufacturer Sodalis Group will acquire Alberto V05, Zest soap, Sure deodorants and other personal care brands in a transaction with current owner Tengram Capital Partners expected to close by the end of October. Recent years have seen high private equity activity in cosmetics and personal care.

Dealmaking trends in 2024 point toward a healthier financial ecosystem than in 2023. However, with a challenging three quarters in 2024, enthusiasm should be curbed as 2024 rounds out in a slow and steady manner.

Aspire Pharma has bolstered its dermatology portfolio by striking a deal to acquire “all assets” of another UK-based player, Canute Pharma.

CEO Chris Cargill talks to Scrip about Sosei Heptares’ new identity as Nxera, the ups and downs of being big pharma’s go-to small-molecule drug hunter and its move into commercialization in Japan.

Perelel acquiring Loom online platform providing reproductive health, sexual wellness and parenting education. First direct-to-consumer product for Curive Healthcare’s Plum brand formulated for vaginal area dryness.

Plus deals involving Jiangsu Alphamab/CSPC, Zydus/CDRI, Junshi/JSIAMA, Repair/Genevant, Sanofi/I-Mab, Novartis/Mitem and BioAtla/Context.

This week, the FDA announced a new head of its device evaluation office; synthetic genomics firm Constructive Bio landed $58m in funding; and Natera got a permanent injuction against NeoGenomics Labs' RaDaR assay.

Philip Morris described a scenario of being essentially blacklisted by the health care sector and its CDMO partners as it threw in the towel on its £1.1bn acquisition of UK inhalation specialist Vectura. It agreed to offload the firm at a fraction of the initial cost.