What's behind the two ADC heavyweight deals in a row, Gilead and Mercedon' different options?

Two big ADC drug deals in a row have refocused attention on antibody-coupled drugs: on September 13th Gilead announced that it would buy Immunomedics for $88 a share in cash, a deal that is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
gilead deal is, of course, the ace drug Trodelvy in the hands of Immunomedics, the world's first antibody consumable to target Trout-2.
September 14, MercaTon announced two partnership agreements with Seattle Genetics in a deal worth $4.5 billion.
Under the agreement, Mercadon will receive co-development and commercial rights to an antibody-coupled drug targeting zinc ion transport protein LIV-1, Ladiratuzumab vedotin, and another commercialization interest in TKI drug Tukysa for her 2-positive breast cancer in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, as well as other regions outside the United States, Canada and Europe.
, Ladiratuzumab vedotin is currently in phase 2 clinical phase.
two consecutive ADC heavyweight deals, Gilead and Mercado chose the same layout ADC drug, Gilead is looking at Immunomedics' Trodelvy at any cost more than Immunomedics currently has twice its current market value, while Mercado chose to work with Seattle Genetics.
the information behind these two deals? Let's start with Immunomedics, a company focused on the development, production and commercialization of antibody drug concedes (ADCs).
its main product is Trodelvy in Gilead Phase, the drug's target Trtp-2, which is thought to be highly expressed in tumors of multiple endosthel sources.
April, Trodelvy was approved by the FDA for adult metastasis triple negative breast cancer (mTNBC) patients.
the three-yin breast cancer market alone may not be so attractive.
GlobalData predicts that the global HER2-negative breast cancer treatment market will reach $6.12 billion by 2023, while triple-negative breast cancer cases could account for only about 20 percent of that, or billions of dollars.
However, Trodelvy's efficacy against bladder cancer, hormone-positive breast cancer, lung cancer and other tumor types is being further tested, and the drug is well-regarded and is thought to be a heavyweight product with sales of more than $1 billion.
, Trodelvy is a potential stock.
but in the eyes of industry insiders, the deal's premium is close to 110 per cent, and while Immunomedics and Trodelvy have more potential for research and development pipelines, Gilead is taking a risk.
In fact, Seattle Genetics had been in contact with Trodelvy as early as 2017 and was looking to gain global rights to research, production and commercial development of the drug for a total of $2 billion, which, of course, was met with fierce protests from the Immunomedics board at the time, which also fired the company's then-CEO and chief scientific officer.
, Gilead paid more than 10 times the price of the purchase, not to make a big bet.
's purpose is clear, in order to "old medicine" has passed, the performance of the difficult time to quickly resupply promising new products, continue to replicate the success of past mergers and acquisitions.
Since it's a self-help product to fill its own performance gap, It's clear that Seattle Genetics' ladiratuzumab vedotin is not appropriate, after all, it's only in phase 2 clinical stage, some way from commercialization.
Of course, can be seen by Merca East, ladiratuzumab vedotin also has its own advantages, according to phase I, single-arm clinical trial results, 60 patients with triple-yin breast cancer received 4 treatment options, ladiratuzumab vedotin single drug treatment objective response rate of 25%, clinical benefit rate of 28%, the middle non-progression survival of 11 weeks.
currently ladiratuzumab vedotin is a potentially effective drug for the treatment of triple-yin breast cancer in addition to Sacituzumab govitecan.
addition, in another Ladiratuzumab vedotin study with partial late stage or metastasis TNBC patients, ORR was 54% (95% CI, 33.4%-73.4%).
note that, according to the researchers, more than 90 percent of patients had some degree of decline in tumor size.
potential for Ladiratuzumab vedotin and K-drug use also appears to be a major reason for Mercer's choice to work with Seattle Genetics.
Seattle Genetics executives spoke on a recent conference call about a weekly dosing program that could optimize the safety and effectiveness of combined drugs with PD-(L)1, though they declined to say when the data would be released or when key trials would begin.
, such as the use of ADC to increase the response rate of K drugs, is also attractive to Mercator, who began exploring the effects of antibody drug coupleds and K drugs for breast cancer treatment several years ago.
now, after seeing early efficacy data, Mercedon is more determined to work with Seattle Genetics.
Seattle Genetics is one of the big three in ADC, which has industry-leading ADC technology.
, in fact, most of the current ADC drug use is Seattle Genetics and another ADC giant, ImmunoGen, in terms of technology origin.
, in addition to in-house product development, Seattle Genetics and many companies have ADC license agreements or ADC co-development agreements, such as AbbVie, Astellas, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, etc.
Seattle Genetics can be said to be very popular with these big drugmakers, and Mercer East's partnership with them is undoubtedly a good look at its technical advantages in ADC.
Chart 1: Seattle Genetics' cooperation with other pharmaceutical companies around the world in ADC Source: Company website, China Kang Industrial Capital Research Center ADC drug into a period of rapid development, favored by many enterprises According to a report released by market research firm Up Market Research, the global ADC market in 2017 is about $1.57 billion, the global ADC market is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 25.9% between 2019 and 2025.
statistics, there are currently 10 ADC drugs approved for market.
From the time of the launch of several ADC drugs already on the market, three are on the market in 2019, two are on the market this year, the number of drugs on the market in the past eight years is now reached in two years, ADC drugs into the harvest period, the development of the field has been rapid.
Chart 2: 10 FDA-approved ADC drug sources worldwide: Public information, China Kang Industrial Capital Research Center and a look at product acquisitions in the ADC sector over the past few years, according to Evaluate Pharma statistics, Spurred by the performance of ADC drugs on the market, acquisitions in this area have become more frequent in the last two years.
in terms of the amount of deals possible, single acquisition fees in the sector have also increased in the last two years.
On the one hand, more and more ADC products enter the mid-to-late stages of research and development or even go on the market, and the cost of the target acquisition will naturally increase;
Chart 3: Product Acquisitions in the ADC segment (not including corporate acquisitions) Source: Evaluate Pharma, China Kang Industrial Capital Research Center such as AstraZeneta, Mercer East, Gilead and other large pharmaceutical companies have also targeted the field, the acquisition of related ADC drugs and even companies, improve their own layout in this area to continue to expand their oncology drug sector.
ADC drugs are expected to have great potential in the anti-tumor market for some time to come.