Pamvatamig

Genmab made one of the splashiest European biopharma acquisitions in recent memory on Monday morning, when it said it would buy antibody maker Merus for $8 billion in cash. Endpoints News caught up with Genmab CEO Jan van de Winkel to discuss the deal, which he described as a “very fair price” for Merus’ shareholders. Genmab is paying $97 per share $MRUS , which is a 41% premium to Friday’s closing price. The CEO spoke from Genmab’s R&D site in Utrecht, Netherlands, which he says is about 50 meters away from Merus’ headquarters. The companies have known each other for two decades, but over the past two years, Genmab had been closely following Merus’ lead drug candidate for head and neck cancer, an EGFRxLGR5 antibody called petosemtamab. Talks ramped up after Phase 2 data were presented at ASCO this summer. The deal could help Genmab become a global leader in the head and neck cancer space, and accelerate past rivals like Bicara Therapeutics. This interview has been substantially edited for length and clarity. Kyle LaHucik: The main question I always ask with deals is: Why now? Jan van de Winkel: We have the confidence now that we are investing in a fantastic product. LaHucik: Had Merus been looking at other potential deals, or was this the result of Genmab reaching out to Merus? Van de Winkel: We’ve known them since they existed for 23 years. We have been in detail evaluating and speaking with them about the petosemtamab data based on what was in the public domain, and we were really quite keen in seeing whether that could be a molecule which could really contribute to our late-stage clinical pipeline. This is perfect for Genmab to really move this company robustly into a sustainably profitable company in the coming years and into the next decade. LaHucik: By doing the acquisition now, ahead of the Phase 3 data, did that allow Genmab to come in at a lower price? I just covered the Novartis-Tourmaline Bio deal, and that went from $28 per share prior to Phase 2 data to $48 per share after Phase 2 data. Van de Winkel: We are an antibody company. It is a total of eight medicines on the market based on our technology. Today, Novo Nordisk filed another bispecific based on our technology, Mim8, to the FDA as a BLA filing. We are very good at evaluating antibody-based medicines. With the data right now in the public domain, we can actually look at that data much more carefully than other companies can, because of our expertise in the antibody space. This is more or less similar to what we did last year with ProfoundBio, but we had actually less than 40 patients’ worth of data. But we saw immediately that this was not a Phase 1/2 candidate. This was a Phase 3 candidate before the rest of the field saw that. And within one and a half years after we acquired ProfoundBio, we have moved it to one Phase 3 and by the end of this year, there will be three Phase 3s. LaHucik: What is Genmab’s interest in Merus’ EGFRxc-MET bispecific MCLA-129? Van de Winkel: MCLA-129 is a target combination we know really, really well because we have a c-METxEGFR bispecific from the ProfoundBio acquisition as an ADC. This is in dose escalation. This one is different characteristics. But I can assure you that the complete deal and the complete value was anchored on petosemtamab. The rest would be potential upside. Once we bring the two companies together, we would have to rank order all the programs. I’ve never in my life, Kyle, spent $8 billion. So I wanted to be 100% sure, nearly 100% sure, that we were doing the right thing here. The market is reacting really positively. We may have found another jewel, basically a rough diamond we can polish and let it shine like we did with ProfoundBio and Rina-S. LaHucik: What are your thoughts on investor reaction to the acquisition? Shares were down slightly, about 1.5%, in premarket trading. Van de Winkel: Honestly, the feedback to me has been universally positive. I just came from an investor call with a very large investor, very positive about the strategic rationale. They need to get more reassurance from further clinical data. LaHucik: Contingent value rights have become a mainstay in a lot of pharma acquisitions. Was that ever a consideration in these deal talks? Van de Winkel: They came up at some point. But we don’t like contingent value rights, because they hang above your head for the coming years, depending on how you define the trigger points. We didn’t like that. We wanted to do it in one go. LaHucik: I’ve covered six biopharma acquisitions so far this month. Do you get a sense that deal appetite is increasing? Van de Winkel: It is definitely. Uncertain times geopolitically and politically, but I can see that a lot of companies are very open to fill their pipeline with new candidates. What I hear from my ecosystem is that the appetite goes up for deals. LaHucik: Is there anything else you wanted to highlight about the deal? Van de Winkel: Peto [petosemtamab] fits very, very naturally in that late-stage product pipeline. Genmab will be a different company five years from now. LaHucik: Do you want to still be there five years from now? Van de Winkel: Absolutely. I cannot think of retiring. I have too much energy. LaHucik: Thank you for taking the time.

Genmab plans to buy Merus for $8 billion in cash to get a head and neck cancer drug that might make it onto the market in 2027. By scooping up the Dutch biotech, Copenhagen-based Genmab is gaining access to a bispecific antibody that reached a “ home run scenario ” in Phase 2 results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology confab in May, Jefferies analysts said at the time. Genmab said Monday it would pay $97 per share $MRUS to get Merus, with the deal anticipated to close early in the first quarter of 2026. Genmab’s shares $GMAB were down 3% before the opening bell. Merus’ stock, meanwhile, jumped 38% in premarket Nasdaq trading to nearly match the buyout price. The move comes two weeks after Genmab culled an early-stage asset from its first-ever acquisition , the $1.8 billion deal for antibody-drug conjugate startup ProfoundBio in 2024. Now, via the industry’s fourth-largest biopharma acquisition so far this year, Genmab could become a global leader in the head and neck cancer fight and accelerate past rivals like Bicara Therapeutics. But there is risk involved. Merus’ petosemtamab, an EGFRxLGR5 antibody, is still in Phase 3 testing and has not yet presented those late-stage results. Interim topline data from one or both Phase 3 studies, in first- and second or third-line head and neck cancer, aren’t anticipated until next year, Genmab said. “We think that the timing is perfect here,” Genmab CEO Jan van de Winkel said on an analyst call. “We went through 56,000 files in due diligence, and we are very, very confident that this is a potential game-changing, potentially transformational bispecific antibody.” Genmab said the drug could reach blockbuster status sales by 2029 and multibillion dollars in annual revenue further down the line. The Epkinly maker said it could have four in-house programs land “multiple new drug launches by 2027.” That includes Rina-S , the lead ADC from the ProfoundBio deal, according to a presentation on Monday. The drug is in Phase 3 testing in ovarian cancer, and Genmab predicts at least $2 billion in peak annual sales from the drug. “We believe Genmab has the right vision and experience to advance petosemtamab in recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancer and beyond,” Merus CEO Bill Lundberg said in a press release. Merus had $892 million in cash and equivalents, which was expected to take the company into 2028, it said in an August corporate presentation . Merus nabbed an accelerated approval for its NRG1+ cancer drug Bizengri last December, but the medicine is licensed to Partner Therapeutics, which markets the treatment in the US. Genmab did not mention Merus’ other clinical-stage asset, an EGFRxc-MET bispecific codenamed MCLA-129. Most biopharma M&A deals are valued around a lead or single asset, industry insiders have said . Merus also has potential to receive royalties on candidates in development with partners. Incyte is working on a PD-1xTGFβR2 bispecific dubbed INCA33890, and Ono Pharmaceutical is testing a PD-1xCD3 bispecific named ONO-4685. On the day of the ProfoundBio deal, van de Winkel told Endpoints News that Genmab likely wouldn’t do another major acquisition shortly after inking its first. “There’s a lot to digest. If you asked me if Genmab is ready to do another deal of this size very quickly, the answer is no,” the Genmab CEO told Endpoints in April 2024. Now, the veteran antibody maker is delving further into bispecifics with Merus’ so-called Biclonics antibodies. Bispecifics have become a go-to approach for cancer drug developers in recent years, with the regulatory clearance of multiple medicines drumming up dealmaking interest. Merus had secured platform collaborations with Eli Lilly , Gilead , Biohaven and others over the years. Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a comment from Genmab’s analyst call about the deal.