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(Bloomberg) – Pfizer Inc., maker of a top-selling Covid vaccine, will buy all the shares of Trillium Therapeutics Inc. that it doesn’t own, earning the immune cancer drug maker for a net worth of 2, $ 26 billion.
Pfizer will pay $ 18.50 per share for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Trillium, the companies said in a statement Monday. The price represents a 118% premium over the 60-day weighted average share price. Shares of Trillium nearly tripled to $ 11.67, while Pfizer rose 3.6% at 9:38 a.m. in New York.
Pfizer invested $ 25 million in Trillium in September as part of its Breakthrough Growth Initiative, when Jeff Settleman, senior vice president of Pfizer’s oncology research and development group, was appointed to Trillium’s scientific advisory board.
Trillium’s two flagship molecules, TTI-622 and TTI-621, block signaling proteins involved in blood cancers, and both are being tested in humans for several types of disease. They target CD47, a protein found on certain cancer cells that masks them from the normal immune response, and send a signal to activate the response.
The first clinical data for both molecules are encouraging and they are expected to become another important immunotherapy for several types of cancer, particularly those in the blood, said Chris Boshoff, Pfizer’s director of development for oncology, in the statement.
Blood cancers account for 6% of all tumor diagnoses worldwide, according to the release. Last year, more than one million people around the world were diagnosed with some form of blood cancer and more than 700,000 people died from it.
The move follows the July agreement between Pfizer and Arvinas Inc. to develop and market ARV-471, a breast cancer drug that breaks down the hormone estrogen. Pfizer has agreed to pay Arvinas $ 650 million upfront along with $ 1.4 billion in potential milestone payments, as well as a $ 350 million stake in biotechnology.
Pfizer’s oncology portfolio includes 24 approved drugs that generated approximately $ 10.9 billion in revenue last year, up 21% operationally from 2019. the company said.
(Updates with actions in the second paragraph)
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