Business
Mallinckrodt will buy immunotherapy company Therakos for $1.33 billion. Therakos's flagship system is used to treat symptoms associated with a common form of skin cancer in patients who have been unresponsive to prior treatments, reports Reuters. The platform is used by academic medical centers, hospitals and treatment centers in more than 25 countries.
Devices based on Therakos's technology are the world's only approved fully integrated systems for extracorporeal photopheresis, or ECP, in which blood is treated with a photosensitizing agent and irradiated with light. Shares of Mallinckrodt, which makes generic and specialty drugs as well as medical imaging agents, were little changed in afternoon trading on Monday. Dublin-based Mallinckrodt said it would focus on selling more of Therakos's devices in the United States, where it is approved only for a form of skin cancer. Outside the United States, the device is also used to treat Crohn's disease, among other applications.
Mallinckrodt is under a bit of pressure because the growth of its biggest product, HP Acthar Gel, seems to be slowing, only a year after Mallinckrodt obtained the ultra-expensive, immune-modulating drug in its acquisition of Questcor, notes the New York Times. Shares of Mallinckrodt fell last week after the company lowered sales expectations for Acthar in announcing quarterly earnings. The Therakos transaction also is the latest takeover in what has been a banner year for deal-making in the health care sector, particularly among pharmaceutical companies as they seek new products and try to gain greater scale.
There have been more than 1,600 deals in the health care sector worth roughly $430 billion this year through the first week of August, an 88 percent increase over the prior year, according to Thomson Reuters. “Therakos is, quite simply, another excellent fit for Mallinckrodt,” Mark Trudeau, the Mallinckrodt president and chief executive, said in a news release. Therakos, based in West Chester, Pa., develops treatment systems to help patients’ immune systems fight disease. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2015.
