AstraZeneca's rare disease arm in $1 bln deal for Pfizer gene therapies—more clandestine swops

What's this all about???

News: July 28, 20239:18 AM GMT+1:

AstraZeneca's rare disease arm in $1 bln deal for Pfizer gene therapies

The article informs us:

“AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said on Friday its Alexion unit had agreed to buy U.S. drugmaker Pfizer's (PFE.N) early-stage rare disease gene therapy portfolio for up to $1 billion, plus royalties on sales, as the British drugmaker bets on new genetic therapies.

The British company also said Sharon Barr, head of research and development at Alexion, would succeed Mene Pangalos, the long-time biopharmaceuticals head of research at AstraZeneca.”

This is the Alexion management team

Do you notice something? If not, it’s this. No-one on the team with any experience of manufacture, either for clinical trial supplies, or full scale commercial product.

Hold that thought as we go down the page.

Why the Portfolio Swapping?

This is not new, of course. Here’s a swop deal going back to 2015:

Novartis announces completion of transactions with GSK:

“Basel, March 2, 2015 - Novartis announced today that it has completed a series of transactions with GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK), including the acquisition of certain oncology products and pipeline compounds from GSK, the creation of a world-leading consumer healthcare business through a joint venture that combines the two companies' consumer divisions, and the divestiture of the Novartis non-influenza Vaccines business to GSK. The transactions were announced in April 2014 as part of the Novartis global portfolio transformation.”

So, GSK swops its oncology (cancer) products for Novartis’ vaccines. That’s OK isn’t it? We all did a bit of card swapping when we were nippers, for heaven’s sake!