Bristol Myers will acquire maker of heart drug

Drug giant Bristol Myers SquibbCo. will buyMyoKardia Inc. for $13.1 billion in cash in a deal to expand its offering of heart therapies.

Bristol Myers, which clinched the largest pharmaceutical deal in history just last year, will pay $225 a share for MyoKardia, according to a statement Monday from the companies. That’s a premium of 61 percent over the biotech stock’s Friday closing price.

With the purchase, Bristol Myers gets access to MyoKardia’s lead product mavacamten, an experimental drug that treats obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick. Expanding Bristol Myers’ lineup of heart drugs would help the company maintain a more diversified lineup of therapies after emphasizing the expansion of its oncology business in recent years. The blood thinner Eliquis remains its top seller, though it is expected to face more competition in coming years.

“We’ve been thinking about other ways we can strengthen the company, and in particular, the other side of the decade,” CEO Giovanni Caforio said. “This is a disease with no available treatment, and the value is very significant.”

“It can really be a multibillion-dollar asset,” he said.

Nearly a year ago, Bristol Myers closed its $74 billion takeover of Celgene Corp., moving it up the ranks of companies leading the charge in an increasingly competitive field for cancer therapies. But investors have remained concerned that the new combined company will have few growth prospects in the latter half of the decade. Revlimid, the main drug obtained in the deal, is expected to lose U.S. patent exclusivity in 2027. Eliquis is expected to lose exclusivity in 2026.

An application for approval of mavacamten is expected to be submitted in next year’s first quarter, according to the statement. Executives said on a call that it’s too early to discuss the drug’s potential price.

Bristol Myers plans to explore other uses for the drug and to develop additional experimental compounds from MyoKardia.

The New York-based pharmaceutical company said it plans to finance the acquisition with a combination of cash and debt. Bristol Myers has debt of more than $47 billion.