Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is joining the global weight loss drug market, seeking to challenge weight loss drug giants Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. The company has recently agreed to acquire weight loss drug developer Carmot Therapeutics for $2.7 billion.
In a statement on Monday (December 4th), Carmot stated that in addition to the $2.7 billion upfront acquisition price, Carmot shareholders will also receive up to $400 million in payments if certain milestones are achieved.
This deal will give Roche access to Carmot’s current portfolio of research and development, including all clinical and preclinical assets.
The biggest “potential stock” in Carmot’s drug portfolio is the candidate drug CT-388, which belongs to a class known as GLP-1/GIP dual-target receptor agonists with effects similar to Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug Mounjaro and weight-loss drug Zepbound.
Roche added that following encouraging results from phase I trials of CT-388, the drug is ready for phase II human trials. The drug is considered to have “best-in-class” potential.
It is expected that this $2.7 billion acquisition deal will be officially completed in the first quarter of 2024, at which time Carmot employees will join Roche’s pharmaceutical division.
Last year, Roche suffered a major setback after its Alzheimer’s disease drugs failed in phase II clinical trials. Since taking office as CEO in March this year, Thomas Schinecker has been accelerating transactions.
In October this year, Roche agreed to acquire Telavant Corporation for $7.1 billion. Telavant was co-founded by Pfizer and multinational biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. The main purpose of the acquisition was to obtain rights for Televant’s RVT-3101 drugs’ development, manufacturing, and commercialization in the United States and Japan.
RVT-3101 is a drug for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and is a fully human monoclonal antibody targeting tumor necrosis factor-like ligand 1A (TL1A). It mainly inhibits the TL1A pathway to target inflammation and fibrosis. IBD, also known as “green cancer,” currently has no cure and is a lifelong disease.
This acquisition of Carmot is an important step for Roche’s recent entry into the booming weight loss drug market.
There have been many acquisition deals in the global pharmaceutical market recently involving weight loss drug development projects. For example, last month AstraZeneca agreed to purchase the patent rights of Chinese company Eccogene’s GLP-1 drug ECC5004 for $2 billion. The drug is still in clinical stages and is an experimental drug used to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes.