Ipsen will buy fellow French biotech ImCheck Therapeutics for €350 million upfront ($406 million), adding to a series of M&A deals that have steadily buoyed the industry’s optimism in recent weeks.
The deal could balloon to a total of €1 billion ($1.16 billion) if certain
milestones
are met, the companies
said
Wednesday. It was revealed in conjunction with Ipsen’s third-quarter results, in which the Paris drugmaker
increased
its full-year sales guidance by about 3%.
Via ImCheck, Ipsen will be getting ICT01, a monoclonal antibody in Phase 1/2 for first-line acute myeloid leukemia patients who aren’t able to get intensive chemo. The investigational drug is also being explored for multiple additional cancer types.
“Ipsen is not one of these mega pharma, and that’s what is really attractive for us,” ImCheck CEO Pierre d’Epenoux said in an interview with
Endpoints News
.
“We truly believe that in the hands of Ipsen, they are going to treasure this asset. This is, I believe, transformational for them from a strategic standpoint. They cannot fail,” d’Epenoux added.
The move marks at least the 10th biopharma acquisition since Sept. 1, according to an Endpoints tally. The deals — including a few multibillion-dollar bets from large pharma — have been part of a surge in positive biopharma news this fall, as
megarounds
are returning,
licensing deals
are coming in hot and the XBI is climbing higher.
Ipsen itself has been on a dealmaking frenzy over the past few years to expand its pipeline in its three main areas of oncology, rare diseases and neuroscience.
Since the beginning of 2024, Ipsen has done licensing deals with
Biomunex
,
Day One
,
Foreseen
,
Marengo
,
Skyhawk
and
Sutro
. The Sutro-derived ADC has already been
culled
. Since 2019, the company has also acquired Clementia Pharmaceuticals, Epizyme and Albireo.
Regarding ImCheck, Ipsen has been familiarizing itself with the small biotech for years, Ipsen Chief Business Officer Philippe Lopes-Fernandes said in a separate interview
.
ImCheck was founded a decade ago based on work out of the Paoli-Calmettes Cancer Institute in Marseille.
Once ImCheck started generating clinical data in AML, Ipsen became more intrigued and began discussions, Lopes-Fernandes said.
The 10-year-old biotech was working on raising an approximately €100 million Series D while also going through a “competitive” M&A process, d’Epenoux said. “I was actually still talking to investors a couple days ago,” he said. The biotech last drummed up an $86 million
Series C in 2022
, which included interest from pharma companies as the venture arms of Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim took part in the round.
The deal’s French connection was also a nice piece to the story, d’Epenoux said. Lopes-Fernandes said Ipsen “didn’t do this deal because of” that regional kinship, but that the “French-French angle is an added element.”
“Frankly, we would have done this deal if it was a company from anywhere in the world,” Lopes-Fernandes said, calling in from a cab on the way to ImCheck’s offices in Marseille for a town hall with the 48-employee company.
ImCheck and Ipsen expect to close their deal by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
ImCheck is developing what it describes as a “superfamily of immunomodulators” via work on γ9δ2 T cells.
The biotech has been targeting butyrophilins with the aim of bringing together the adaptive and innate immune responses.
Its lead therapy, ICT01, looks to ramp up a gamma delta affront on tumors. ICT01 targets BTN3A, a molecule central to immune regulation in cancer. ImCheck said its experimental medicine targets three isoforms of BTN3A that are found abundantly across various solid and liquid tumors, including melanoma, colorectal, ovarian, leukemia, lymphoma and other cancers.
ImCheck
presented
interim Phase 1/2 data on 45 patients at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology confab this summer. In the presentation, they said ICT01 “may emerge as the first immunotherapeutic option for newly diagnosed AML patients” who aren’t able to get induction chemo.
The next step will be a Phase 2/3, Lopes-Fernandes said. ImCheck had already been in discussions with regulatory authorities about that potential trial, he said, and noted Ipsen will continue those talks to “make sure that we start the studies very fast.”
“We got a very positive feedback from the FDA on Aug. 28 on our plans moving forward. EMA has also confirmed their interest,” d’Epenoux said.
ImCheck’s pipeline also entails preclinical work in autoimmune and infectious diseases. Lopes-Fernandes said Ipsen will assess the ImCheck pipeline after the deal closes, but “the potential in autoimmune is less of interest for Ipsen.”