Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Danish drugmaker Lundbeck will buy La Jolla, CA-based Longboard Pharmaceuticals for $2.6 billion in cash, the companies said Monday morning, marking the largest biopharma M&A deal since July . Neuroscience-focused Lundbeck will get access to a 5-HT2C superagonist that just entered Phase 3 last month for Dravet syndrome, a severe type of epilepsy found in infancy. The experimental medicine, known as bexicaserin, could also apply to other developmental and epileptic encephalopathies like Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and CDKL5 deficiency disorder, the company has said. Lundbeck projects a launch of bexicaserin in the last quarter of 2028 and global peak sales potential of up to $2 billion. The drugmaker also gets an S1P receptor modulator dubbed LP659 that is in Phase 1 and could be tested in multiple neurological diseases. Lundbeck CEO Charl van Zyl said Longboard will “become a cornerstone in Lundbeck’s neuro-rare franchise.” “Bexicaserin addresses a critical unmet need for patients suffering from rare and severe epilepsies, for which there are very few good treatment options available,” van Zyl said in a statement. Longboard spun out of Arena Pharmaceuticals with $56 million in October 2020. It went public five months later. Pfizer then bought Arena for $6.7 billion in December 2021. The deal comes amid a relatively dull past few months for public biopharma M&A, with many of the recent deals falling below $1.3 billion. There has been no deal of $5 billion or higher yet in 2024. Lundbeck itself has been relatively quiet on the acquisition front since its $1.95 billion Alder BioPharmaceuticals deal in September 2019. That led to a migraine drug approval a few months later for Vyepti . The Longboard deal is slated to close this quarter, and both boards have approved it, the companies said. Longboard will be bought for $60 per share $LBPH . Its share price skyrocketed 50% to $58 in premarket trading.

Danish drugmaker Lundbeck has agreed to spend $2.6 billion acquiring a young biotechnology company with an experimental brain medicine that could become a blockbuster product.The acquisition, announced Monday, has Lundbeck paying $60 in cash for each outstanding share of Longboard Pharmaceuticals, a 54% premium to the biotechs stock price Friday. The companies expect their deal to close before the end of the year.Should it go through, the deal would hand Lundbeck a possible treatment for a series of rare brain disorders characterized by seizures and developmental delays. There are more than 20 types of these disorders, known as developmental and epileptic encephalopathies, or DEEs. And according to Lundbeck, they affect around 220,000 people in the U.S., half of whom dont have an approved therapy to try.Lundbeck thinks the answer to that problem lies in a Longboard drug called bexicaserin. The drug entered late-stage clinical testing last month for one of the more prominent DEEs, Dravet syndrome, and is also being evaluated against another, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. But Lundbeck believes it has the ability to address all DEEs, and estimates the peak annual sales potential could reach $1.5 billion to $2 billion.This transformative transaction will become a cornerstone in Lundbecks neuro-rare franchise, with a potential to drive growth into the next decade, said Charl van Zyl, the companys CEO, in a statement.Lundbeck plans on bexicaserin entering the market in late 2028. Keeping to that timeline will be important, since the main patent protecting the companys top seller the antipsychotic medication Rexulti is set to run out the following year. Two of Lundbecks other main products, Abilify Maintena and Trintellix, face patent pressure as well.In a presentation, the company noted how bexicaserin has patent protection until 2041. An additional selling point was its compelling effectiveness in mid-stage studies. The drug is designed to boost a protein that releases GABA, a neurotransmitter which calms the brain. Such an effect could be valuable for conditions where brain cells are overly excited, like various epilepsies.Launched in late 2020, Longboard spun out from the immune system specialist Arena Pharmaceuticals, which soon after sold to Pfizer for about $6.7 billion. Longboard began with $56 million in funding, then raised another $80 million going public the next year.Its acquisition comes during a slow period of biopharmaceutical dealmaking. The third quarter was the weakest for bigger-ticket mergers and acquisitions since early 2022, according to a BioPharma Dive database. So far, 2024 has yet to see a deal worth more than $5 billion, which has occurred at least once in each of the past seven years. '

Neuroscience drug developer Lundbeck is expanding its scope to epilepsy via the $2.6 billion acquisition of Longboard Pharmaceuticals, a company whose lead asset is in late-stage clinical development for a rare, inherited seizure disorder that has few approved treatments. According to deal terms announced Monday, Lundbeck will pay $60 in cash for each Longboard share, representing a 54.2% premium to the biotech’s closing stock price on Friday and a 77% premium to the stock’s average price for the month of September. When La Jolla, California-based Longboard went public in 2021, it priced shares at $16 apiece. Longboard’s lead drug candidate, bexicaserin, is in development for developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs), a group of disorders that include the rare epilepsies Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The oral small molecule is an agonist of the 5-HT2C receptor, whose roles include regulating seizure severity. This receptor is already targeted by Fintepla, a UCB drug approved to treat seizures associated with Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut. But Fintepla’s label carries a black box warning for cardiovascular complications. Bexicaserin is designed to selectively target 5-HT2C without also hitting other receptors that can cause adverse effects. presented by Health IT Accelerating Claim Processing: Strategies to Shorten the Life of a Claim These strategies and practices can significantly shorten the life cycle of claims, leading to quicker resolutions and improved financial outcomes. By Greenway Health Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ cannabis-derived Epidiolex, approved for Dravet, Lennox-Gastaut, and tuberous sclerosis complex, has no black box warning. Some high-profile efforts in DEEs have encountered setbacks. In June, Takeda Pharmaceutical reported its drug candidate soticlestat failed separate placebo-controlled Phase 3 tests in Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut. Longboard had been making the case that bexicaserin can stand apart from other approaches to treat epilepsies. In January, the biotech reported Phase 1b/2a data showing a median 53.3% reduction in seizure frequency in patients with DEEs during the 75-day treatment period, results that had the company making claims of best-in-class potential. Shares of the biotech soared more than 300% after that data report. Bexicaserin’s efficacy results are holding up so far. According to a Lundbeck investor presentation, nine-month open-label data show a 57.7% reduction in countable motor seizures. In September, Longboard began a global Phase 3 test enrolling Dravet patients age 2 and older. This clinical trial is part of a broader program planned to evaluate the drug in about 480 patients who have a range of DEEs. The Longboard pipeline also includes LP659, a modulator of the S1P receptor that has potential applications in neuroinflammatory disorders. A Phase 1 single-ascending dose study has been completed but plans for a Phase 1 multiple-ascending dose study are subject to resolution of a partial clinical hold. Both bexicaserin and LP659 were licensed from Arena Pharmaceuticals. presented by Sponsored Post The Promise of Value-Based Care and MedTech Innovation Monica Vajani, Executive Director for mHUB’s MedTech Accelerator, discusses how mHUB is helping innovators transition healthcare towards value-based care. By Monica Vajani - mHUB Lundbeck focuses on neuroscience drugs. The Copenhagen-based company’s top-selling product is Rexulti, a schizophrenia and depression drug that last year expanded its approved uses to include agitation caused by Alzheimer’s disease. The product accounted for 4.5 billion Danish krone (about $661 million) in revenue last year, a 16% increase compared to the prior year, according to the company’s annual report. Within neuroscience, Lundbeck executives have identified rare neurological diseases as an opportunity for pipeline expansion. Lundbeck projects a fourth quarter 2028 launch for bexicaserin. The company estimates the drug could achieve peak sales of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. “This transformative transaction will become a cornerstone in Lundbeck’s neuro-rare franchise, with a potential to drive growth into the next decade,” Lundbeck President and CEO Charl van Zyl said in a prepared statement. “Bexicaserin addresses a critical unmet need for patients suffering from rare and severe epilepsies, for which there are very few good treatment options available.” The boards of directors of both Lundbeck and Longboard have approved the acquisition, which still needs the majority of Longboard’s outstanding voting shares to be tendered. The deal also must pass regulatory muster. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year. Image: Getty Images, Iaremenko