Viatris pays $350M to gain two drugs from Idorsia

2024-02-28

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Dive Brief:

Generic drugmaker Viatris has agreed to pay $350 million to Switzerland-based Idorsia for rights to two experimental treatments for heart attack and lupus.

As part of the deal announced Wednesday, Idorsia could also receive additional payments for developmental and regulatory milestones as well as royalties on any future sales. Viatris will also get first dibs on certain other compounds in Idorsia’s pipeline.

The two companies will both contribute to the development of the two initial medicines, known as selatogrel and cenerimod, with Idorsia responsible for as much as $200 million over the next three years. Idorsia employees working on the two drugs will also transfer to Viatris.

Dive Insight:

The deal boosts Viatris’ pipeline while offering a much-needed cash infusion to Idorsia, a spinoff that began operations in 2017 after Johnson & Johnson took over its parent company, Actelion, in a $30 billion deal.

Idorsia’s past year was marked by a series of setbacks. First, the experimental cardiovascular drug clazosentan failed in a major study in February 2023. To raise cash, Idorsia sold off its Asia Pacific operations and made plans a few months later to cut as many as 500 positions. Then in September, J&J announced it would return most of the rights to another Idorsia experimental drug, aprocitentan, for resistant hypertension.

The decision meant Idorsia was on the hook to pay J&J as much as 306 million Swiss francs, or about $347 million. “We’ve repeatedly explained that we have many balls in the air,” Idorsia CFO André Muller said in a company statement Wednesday. “We’ve now caught the first one and continue to work on others to secure Idorsia’s future.”

The agreement with Viatris offers a way to continue to benefit from selatogrel and cenerimod while sharing development costs, Idorsia said. Selatogrel is designed to allow people with a history of heart attacks to give themselves an injection in the early phases of an attack, potentially protecting valuable heart muscle. Cenerimod is meant to treat lupus with a once-daily tablet.

Viatris will gain worldwide rights to both drugs through the partnership, excluding Japan, South Korea and certain other Asia-Pacific region nations for cenerimod. The companies expect the deal to close at the end of March.

Born out of the merger of generic drugmakers Mylan and Upjohn, Viatris is increasingly looking to branded drugs for growth. In the fourth quarter, sales of the company’s brand-name medications grew 4% to $2.4 billion, while generic sales dropped 8% to $1.4 billion. Viatris also announced a research and development day for investors and analysts, to be held on March 27.

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