Word on the Street: Novartis May Purchase Cubist for $1.6 billion
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Rumors are rife that Novartis is going to purchase Lexington, MA-based Cubist for $1.6 billion. Wall Street analysts are speculating that Novartis may announce the deal as early as Monday.
Cubist manufactures Cubicin (daptomycin), one of only a handful of new antibiotics brought to market in the past 20 years that is effective against many infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria, most notably methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The company is developing new lipopeptide antibiotics similar to Cubicin and also has an active anti-viral drug discovery program.
Over the past 10 years, big pharma companies largely abandoned antibiotic research and placed all discovery efforts in the hands of only a few smaller public companies and startups. Cubist is the only independent biopharmaceutical company that successfully brought a new antibiotic to market.
Novartis’ possible acquisition of Cubist signals, that at least one major pharmaceutical company sees opportunities and upside in the antibiotic drug discovery market. Several years ago, Pfizer acquired another antibiotic discovery company, Vicuron (formerly Versicor) but to date the acquisition has not yielded any new antibiotics. While Novartis’ acquisition of Cubist is yet another sign of consolidation that is taking place in the life sciences sector, it may bolster new efforts in the antibacterial drug discovery area. Unlike Cubist, Novartis has enough money and marketing muscle to increase Cubin sales and develop some of the exciting new molecular entities in Cubist’s drug development pipeline.
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