, Columnist
AstraZeneca Chases AbbVie, Cheaply
It gets a competing cancer drug on the cheap.
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Earlier this year, AbbVie won an intense bidding war for Pharmacyclics, paying $21 billion for the company and the right to split sales of its potential blockbuster blood-cancer drug Imbruvica with Johnson & Johnson. AstraZeneca may have just done AbbVie one better.
With the purchase of 55 percent of Acerta Pharma for $4 billion -- with an option to take over the entire firm for about $3 billion -- AstraZeneca gets a cancer drug, acalabrutinib, that could compete directly with Imbruvica. A $7 billion outlay may not sound cheap, but compared to AbbVie's deal, AstraZeneca's is frugal.