LaNova Medicines, which happens to be a cancer drugmaker that previously licensed medicines to AstraZeneca as well as Merck & Co., has gone on to agree to get acquired by Sino BioPharmaceuticals in a deal worth almost $951 million.
In an agreement that was disclosed on July 14, Sino BioPharm to acquire LaNova Medicines is going to be reality where the former will buy approximately 95% of LaNova that it doesn’t own already. Comprising cash holdings of LaNova, the net payment that is going to be made by Sino BioPharm will total almost $500 million.
Once the deal gets completed, LaNova will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sino BioPharm which has previously invested in the Series C1 financing of LaNova that was announced in October 2024.
The news of Sino BioPharm to acquire LaNova Medicines has resulted from the massive gains that the latter has made in the biotech industry.
It is well to be noted that LaNova was founded in Shanghai less than six years ago. In the time since then, it has gone on to build a pipeline, which includes eight clinical-stage compounds, of which two are licensed by companies like AstraZeneca in 2023 and Merck & Co. in 2024.
Interestingly, LaNova’s emergence happens to parallel the fast gains that are made by the biotech sector in China, which, in the span of a decade, has turned from a copycat version to an all-out innovative hub, which regularly designs drugs that are attractive to multinational pharmaceutical firms across the US as well as Europe.
It is worth noting that the deal with AstraZeneca happened to involve an antibody drug conjugate, or ADC, which LaNova had designed to bind GPRC5D, which is a protein target that is rising on the radar of major companies that are developing medicine for multiple myeloma. This pact went on to hand LaNova $55 million upfront.
In another instance, Merck, in November 2024, bought the rights to LM-299 from LaNova, which happens to be a bispecific antibody aimed at cancer drug targets, PD-1 as well as VEGF. This kind of antibody happens to be newly of interest post the success of ivonescimab, which is a similarly structured drug that went on to outperform the dominant immunotherapy by Merck in a head-to-head study based on lung cancer. Merck went on to pay $588 million to LaNova in upfront cash in order to get a license for LM-299.
Apart from these two medicines, LaNova is already testing an antibody that is targeting the protein CCR8 for usage in gastric cancer as well as other solid tumors, along with an ADC, which is aimed at Claudin 18.2. This drug happens to be in phase 3 trials in China, whereas the former happens to be in phase 2.
