Gene therapy progress spurs competition in biotech buyouts
Drugmakers looking to buy into gene therapy are finding healthy competition for promising biotechs, highlighting a renewed enthusiasm to develop one-time treatments for genetic diseases.
Most recently, retinal disease specialist Nightstar Therapeutics fielded interest from four drugmakers before agreeing to a twice-revised offer from Biogen that valued Nightstar at roughly $800M. As in the recent cases of Roche’s $4.8B buyout of Spark Therapeutics and Novartis’ $8.7B buyout of AveXis, competing bids drove up the price to secure each company.
