The therapy delivers radiation directly into tumors by attaching a radioactive particle to a targeting molecule.Big pharma is betting billions on an up-and-coming class of cancer treatments that some on Wall Street are calling a "massive opportunity."
"They're clearly the market leader in this space with an aggressive strategy, both successfully commercializing their products, expanding the market opportunities for those products, and having a pipeline behind that," said Oppenheimer analyst Jeff Jones. "Acquiring Mariana ... gives them even greater discovery capabilities."
The deal's announcement in December came shortly after Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would spend $14 billion to buyout schizophrenia drug developer Karuna Therapeutics. At the time, William Blair analyst Matt Phipps said the deals show Bristol's urgency to bring in more products since some of its older therapies are set to lose their patent protections later this decade.
"There are several large pharma companies that don't yet have radiopharma programs that may be interested in this space," he said. "In addition, I think some of the players that already have programs will be interested in finding additional targets and pipeline programs to augment their portfolio."Everyone, including big pharma, is working on either improving on existing treatments or looking to expand into attacking different cancer tumors.