GSK to buy biotech Bellus Health for $2B
Pharmaceutical giant GSK agreed to buy Canadian biotech Bellus Health for about $2 billion to bolster its pipeline of experimental medicines.
The takeover namely will bring United Kingdom-based GSK a cough medicine that has shown promising results in clinical trials and has advanced through much of the research process. GSK has been trying to replenish its product pipeline as the company faces pressure to improve shareholder returns and keep up with U.K. rival AstraZeneca.
GSK’s announcement comes two days after Merck agreed to buy Prometheus Biosciences for about $10.8 billion, pointing to a deal resurgence as large drugmakers target biotechs to gain new products to replace aging best-sellers.
Adding such external deals to supplement internal innovation “is definitely the strategy that we intend to pursue, so you can expect that we will continue to do more deals,” Luke Miels, GSK’s chief commercial officer, said on a call with reporters.
The drugmaker split from its consumer arm last year, listing that unit separately to focus on its pharmaceutical and vaccine business. GSK is under pressure to find blockbuster products to offset others going off patent, such as its HIV drug dolutegravir, which will lose its exclusivity toward the end of the decade.
Bellus’s experimental cough medicine, called camlipixant, will likely launch in 2026, and the transaction is expected to start boosting earnings per share in 2027, according to GSK. It will pay $14.75 per share in cash for Bellus, a 103% premium to the stock’s Monday close. The deal is expected to yield multibillion-dollar annual sales, Miels said.
According to GSK, about 28 million patients worldwide suffer from refractory chronic cough, which camlipixant targets. The disease is marked by a persistent cough that lasts for more than eight weeks, doesn’t respond to treatment for an underlying condition or remains unexplained, the company said.
A typical patient is in their 50s, female and will spend five years going through the health system trying to get appropriate treatment, Miels said.
Patients often cough between 500 and 900 times a day, which can lead to social stigma, particularly after the pandemic, and other conditions such as depression, according to the company.
Bellus’s board has backed the deal, and the companies said the transaction will likely close in the third quarter.