JandJ buys Actelion for US$30bn

JOHNSON & JOHNSON (J&J) has agreed to buy Swiss biotech firm Actelion for US$30bn, while spinning off the company’s drug development pipeline.

The deal expands the US healthcare giant’s portfolio by securing Actelion’s suite of drugs for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and a number of others that are in late-stage development. It comes as J&J’s top-selling drug Remicade – an autoimmune therapy – faces competition from the launch of a rival treatment Inflectra by Pfizer.

Actelion’s drug discovery and early-stage R&D operations will be spun out into a separate biotech company specialising on small molecule therapies for unmet diseases, in which J&J will hold a 16% share and an option to double its stake. The new company will be led by Actelion’s founders, husband and wife team Martine and Jean-Paul Clozel. The setup of the new company echoes the creation of Actelion itself which was spun out of Roche by the Clozels 20 years ago.

“In making this offer, Johnson & Johnson is recognising all that has been created at Actelion during the last 20 years, and in particular the quality of our PAH franchise, the potential of our key marketed medicines and our promising late-stage development assets,” said Jean-Paul Clozel. “The newly-created R&D company allows us to continue with our successful culture of innovation. It is enormously exciting to continue to develop new and differentiated products, in multiple therapeutic areas, to improve the lives of patients.”

The deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, is being funded by cash that J&J holds outside the US.