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Royalty Pharma acquires ibrutinib royalties

July 19, 2013 12:18 AM UTC

Royalty Pharma (New York, N.Y.) acquired from diagnostic company Quest Diagnostics Inc. (NYSE:DGX) the rights to royalties for cancer compound ibrutinib for $485 million in cash. Quest gained the ibrutinib royalty rights through its 2011 acquisition of Celera Corp. for $670.8 million or about $344 million net of cash. Pharmacyclics Inc. (NASDAQ:PCYC) acquired ibrutinib from Celera in 2006 (see Biocentury, March 21, 2011).

Earlier this month, Pharmacyclics submitted an NDA to FDA for the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk) inhibitor that covalently binds to cysteine residue 481 to treat relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) and to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small cell lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). Pharmacyclics is partnered with the Janssen Biotech Inc. subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) to co-develop and co-commercialize ibrutinib, which has breakthrough therapy designation from FDA for MCL and for CLL or SLL in patients with chromosome 17p deletion, as well as for Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (see BioCentury This Week, June 30). ...