China News Agency, Houston, August 19th. The US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson announced on the 19th that it had acquired the US biotech company Momenta for US$6.5 billion in cash and acquired the experimental therapy Nipocalimab developed by the company.
According to Fox News, Momenta is a company that develops new therapies and drugs for autoimmune diseases. According to the terms of the acquisition, the transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of this year. After the transaction is completed, Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, will be able to use Nipocalimab, an experimental therapy developed by Momenta. The therapy is being tested to treat myasthenia gravis, autoimmune hemolytic anemia and other autoimmune diseases.
On the same day, Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that approximately 2.5% of the world’s population suffers from autoimmune diseases, many of which are rare diseases. Janssen Pharmaceuticals plans to accelerate the development of Nipocalimab.
Bloomberg reported that, so far, the above-mentioned transaction is the largest merger of the US pharmaceutical industry this year. The last large-scale merger and acquisition was that in March this year, Gilead Technology Corporation of the United States agreed to acquire 47 companies (Forty Seven), an anti-cancer therapy biotechnology company, for $4.9 billion.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Nipocalimab therapy is an FcRn antibody therapy, which has recently been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an "orphan drug".
The US "orphan drug" designation is to encourage companies to develop drugs for rare diseases. According to the "Orphan Drug Act" of the United States, drugs used to treat diseases with fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States can apply for "orphan drug" qualification. Tax credits, research and development subsidies, exemption of new drug application fees, and 7-year market exclusivity period after approval for listing.
It is worth noting that, recently, the French Sanofi Group plans to spend US$3.7 billion to acquire Principia, a biopharmaceutical company in the United States, to obtain its treatment for autoimmune diseases.
US investment bank SVB Leerink analyzed that it is expected that by 2030, the sales of such drugs for the treatment of autoimmune diseases in the United States will reach 20 to 25 billion US dollars. (Finish)