“The proposed acquisition of Medivation will build upon Pfizer’s success with our IBRANCE (palbociclib) launch in HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer and with our strong immuno-oncology portfolio, and will transform Pfizer into a leading oncology company”, said Albert Bourla, group president, Pfizer Innovative Health.
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Medivation’s drugs in development also could complement Pfizer’s efforts to develop combinations of cancer agents with so-called immunotherapies, which deploy the immune system in the fight against cancer. Pfizer has since bought Anacor Pharmaceuticals in a $5.2bn deal to add an eczema gel to its portfolio.
The new rules are the reason Pfizer and Allergan scrapped that merger. While hesitant, Pfizer has promised to decide the issue by the end of this year. The deal gave AbbVie shared ownership with Johnson & Johnson in the blockbuster leukemia drug Imbruvica.
Moreover, Medivation’s pipeline candidate talazoparib, an orally-available PARP inhibitor, represents significant upside potential. Pfizer is buying San Francisco-based Medivation for $14 billion. Analysts see sales eventually reaching $4 billion or more annually.
And he called on the drug companies across the board to lower the price, saying a quarter of Americans can not afford their medications and “the era of charging unconscionable prices must end”.
Medivation Inc. and the Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma jointly market Xtandi, with Astellas selling the drug outside the U.S.
Pfizer agreed to take over Allergan PLC late a year ago in a $150 billion deal, but the two companies parted ways in April after the Obama administration targeted the proposed combination with new rules. It was structured as a tax inversion, which means Pfizer’s headquarters would move, on paper only, from NY to reduce the drugmaker’s USA tax bill. Pfizer’s statement said Medivation also has two promising late-stage cancer drugs, talazoparib, which would be used to treat breast cancer, and pidilizumab, which would be used to target lymphoma and other hematologic malignancies.
Talazoparib is a type of drug called a PARP inhibitor, which interferes with the fix of defective DNA. These drugs are expected to be especially effective for breast cancer patients who have mutations in genes called BRCA1 or BRCA2.
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According to Medivation, the addressable patient population for talazoparib in the USA and Europe is about 760k including 10k for the EMBRACA population, while the addressable market opportunity is more than $30 billion. Sanofi dropped the hostility in July as Medivation agreed to enter into confidentiality agreements. PARP inhibitors are now being considered to be the next major class of therapeutics in oncology. This approach, called immunotherapy, is the hottest area in oncology, or perhaps all of medicine, and Pfizer is trying to catch up to leaders like Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck. Although everything is still under wraps at the moment, internal sources reveal that Medivation may accept Pfizer’s offer of $14 billion and pass up an earlier offer of $9.3 billion made by Sanofi.
