Astrazeneca signed a $1 billion (£773 million) contract on Monday to buy a Belgian biotechnology company specializing in cancer immunotherapy, the latest in a series of acquisitions that resulted in positive results for late-stage rare disease drugs.
Small-scale restrained Esobiotec develops in-house CAR-T cell therapy that can exert the power of the immune system to attack cancer and provide more patients with cell therapy treatments delivered in minutes rather than weeks.
The deal marks the latest acquisition by Astrazeneca, the UK's largest publicly listed company, at £184 billion, as the Pharmaceutical Group continues to expand its global operations. That stock fell 1.2% on Monday afternoon.
Esobiotec's approach uses highly targeted lentiviruses to provide genetic instructions to specific immune cells, such as T cells. For potential use in autoimmune diseases, T cells are programmed to recognize and destroy tumor cells for cancer treatment or to tackle autoreactive cells (targeting the body's own tissue or cells). This means that cell therapy is given through a simple injection.
Esobiotec CEO Jean-Pierre Latere described it as a “cost-effective, ready-made treatment” that designs immune cells in patients' bodies. “It's very effective. It effectively turns patients into factories,” he said.
he He was Chief Operating Officer of Belgian biotechnology company Celyad Oncology, and worked for US chemical producer Dow Corning, and began his career as a senior scientist at US drug maker Johnson & Johnson, before starting his career.
Esobiotec is based in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Brabant, and is supported by Benelux Investment Groups Thuja Capital, UCB Ventures, Wallonie Antreprendre, Sambrinvest, Investsud and Invivo Partners in Spain.
The company's approach is much faster and less complicated The cells are genetically modified outside the body than traditional cell therapy taken from the patient, and are returned to the patient as a drug after the immune cell depletion. This takes 3-5 weeks and costs $450,000-500,000 per treatment.
Susan Galbraith, vice president of tumor research and development at Astrazeneca, said the company quickly negotiated that it was “looking for something normal” and quickly negotiated the transaction after seeing the presentation of data from the first patient at JP Morgan's healthcare conference in San Francisco at JP Morgan's San Francisco. In December, the Belgian group began clinical trials for lead products in multiple myeloma, a type of myeloma cancer.
Galbraith added: “We believe that we can transform cell therapy and expand these innovative therapies so that many patients around the world can access them.”
She said that only 10% to 20% of people who can benefit from cell therapy at this time, as clinics in many countries are not set up for a few weeks' process, but with Esobiotec's technology, treatment is given as a simple infusion of the cost of traditional treatments. If the test is shown to work, it may relieve pressure on health systems, including the NHS.
AstraZeneca, which dodged the hostile £69 billion acquisition approach from US drug maker Pfizer in 2014, will initially pay Belgian drug developers $425 million, up to $575 million, based on developer and regulatory milestones.
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Barclays European drug analyst Emily Field described the latest deal as “a wise bolt-on for cell therapy and preliminary but promising data on seven patients.”
Based on other investments, Astrazeneca means that it has seven cell therapy programs in its pipeline, including multiple myeloma that it acquired in China's Gracell Biotechnologies in a $1.2 billion deal in late 2023.
Astrazeneca's biggest deal was the $39 billion acquisition of US rare disease drug developer Alexion in 2020, but was criticised for paying a high price. Mark Danoyer, the division's chief strategy officer and AstraZeneca, defended the deal as a “great acquisition” last month when the company took a $753 million hit to scrap one of its Alexion drugs, but the other two drugs of the acquisition were also abandoned.
Separately, the UK's largest pharmaceutical company said on Monday that Imfinzi's treatment was approved as the first and only immunotherapy for patients with limited stage small cell lung cancer who have not progressed after platinum-based chemoradiation.
AstraZeneca also announced that hypoglycemia drugs, a rare endocrine disease drug that can lead to bone density loss and osteoporosis, have achieved its goal of normalizing calcium levels in the blood in 24 weeks. It is well tolerated by the patients and the trial is planned for 52 weeks. The company acquired the drug a year ago, along with French rare disease expert Amorit Pharma, in a deal worth more than $1 billion.
