Eli Lilly is snapping up Point Biopharma Global for $1.4 billion, marking an official entrance into the radiopharmaceutical cancer therapeutic space.
Lilly will acquire all of Point’s outstanding shares at $12.50 apiece for a total of $1.4 billion. The transaction has already received the stamp of approval from the boards of both companies and is expected to close near the end of this year, subject to customary closing conditions.
The price is an 87% premium to Point's closing stock value on Oct. 2—$6.68 per share—and a 68% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price.
The Indiana-based company’s pipeline of clinical- and preclinical-stage radioligand therapies will now come under Lilly's wing. The biotech also has in-house manufacturing capabilities, which include a 180,000-square-foot radiopharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Indiana and an R&D center in Canada.
Point has two lead programs in phase 3 development: PNT2002 and PNT2003. The first is a prostate-specific membrane antigen targeted radioligand therapy designed to treat metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer after second-line treatment. The asset is currently being tested in a pivotal trial, dubbed SPLASH, with top-line data expected by the end of this year. PNT2003 is a somatostatin receptor targeted radioligand therapy for patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.
"We are excited by the potential of this emerging modality and see the acquisition of Point as the beginning of our investment in developing multiple meaningful radioligand medicines for hard-to-treat cancers, as we have done in small molecule and biologic oncology drug discovery and development,” Jacob Van Naarden, president of the Big Pharma’s oncology unit Loxo@Lilly, said in an Oct. 3 release.
Lilly is slightly behind the curve, striking the deal well after Novartis dove in headfirst to the radiopharmaceuticals space. While Lilly has previously put money behind radiopharmaceutical companies—like supporting Mariana Oncology’s $175 million series B last month—Novartis has made radiopharmaceuticals a pillar of its cancer strategy. Novartis already touts approved radiopharmaceutical drugs Lutathera for certain gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and Pluvicto for patients with prostate cancer.