Lilly to buy gene-editing partner Verve for up to US$1.3 billion in cardiac care push

This April 26, 2017, photo shows the Eli Lilly and Co. corporate headquarters in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Eli Lilly will acquire gene-editing startup Verve Therapeutics for up to US$1.3 billion, the companies said on Tuesday, to boost its pipeline of experimental medicines beyond its blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs.

The U.S. drugmaker, which has struck multiple partnership deals with gene-editing companies in the last two years, will buy Verve for US$10.5 per share, which is at a premium of 67.5 per cent to the company’s last close.

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Shares of Boston, Massachusetts-based Verve jumped 76 per cent to US$11.03 in premarket trading, while Lilly’s stock fell one per cent.

The deal includes an upfront payment of almost US$1 billion and a further US$300 million based on the genetic-medicines firm achieving certain clinical milestones.

The Financial Times was the first to report that the companies were in talks.

Lilly - the world’s largest drugmaker by market capitalization - and Verve were already partnering to develop one-time gene-editing therapies to reduce high cholesterol in people with heart disease, which are expected to be used in combination with other drugs.

“We are skeptical about the true market need of additional genetic medicines in these indications,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said ahead of the deal, pointing to data from other cholesterol-lowering treatments developed by Merck and AstraZeneca.

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Verve’s lead therapies, which are in early-stage trials, use a form of gene editing known as base editing that causes one-time changes to the DNA, potentially turning off genes that contribute to high cholesterol levels.

Base editing is a next-generation form of gene editing which erases and rewrites a specific letter in a gene.

The company is studying its VERVE-102 therapy in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic disorder that causes high levels of bad cholesterol and premature coronary artery disease.

Verve’s gene-editing medicines target the PCSK9, ANGPTL3 and LPA genes responsible for regulating blood cholesterol.

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Reporting by Ananya Palyekar, Christy Santhosh and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Pooja Desai