Roche is to buy hepatitis C therapeutics firm Anadys Pharmaceuticals in a cash deal worth a total of $230 million. Roche says it will immediately initiate a tender offer to buy all the outstanding shares of Anadys’ common stock at $3.70 per share, which represents a 256% premium to the latter’s closing price as the markets closed before the weekend. Anadys’ directors and management have already agreed to tender their shares, which amount to about 7.9% of the firm.
The merger announcement comes within just a couple of days of Anadys reported positive interim data from a Phase IIb study evaluating its lead direct acting hepatitis C therapeutic candidate, setrobuvir, in combination with Roche’s pegylated interferon (Pegasys) and ribavirin (Copegus), in genotype 1 hepatitis C patients. Setrobuvir is a non-nucleosidase HCV RNA polymerase inhibitor. Data from the 283-patient Phase IIb study showed that 78% of treatment-naïve patients and 76% of patients who had responded inadequately to or relapsed after treatment with PEGinterferon and ribavirin (P/R) therapy had undectable virus at week 12 (cEVR) when treated with setrobuvir plus P/R. This compared with 56% and 44%, respectively, for patients who received placebo plus P/R.
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