How Array stayed alive long enough to grow up

Array’s 21-year journey as an independent platform company, culminating in an $11.4 billion buyout, required shifting focus from research to development and back again. The acquisition sends a message that developing focused expertise and sticking with it long term can pay off, even as other technologies and modalities go from zero to sixty in record time and get paid handsomely for it.

At least six biotech acquisitions in the last three years have seen companies bought for amounts ranging from $4.8 billion to $11.9 billion, within eight years of being founded to develop CAR T cell or gene therapies, or to capitalize on the new biology around tissue-agnostic drug development and synthetic lethality. ...