Viela Bio Inc. (NASDAQ: VIE) is selling to a European biopharmaceutical company.
The companies said early Monday they have reached a deal for Dublin's Horizon Therapeutics PLC (NASDAQ: HZNP) to acquire the Gaithersburg drug developer, a MedImmune spinout, for $3.1 billion.
Under the agreement, Horizon will acquire all of Viela’s outstanding shares of common stock for $53 per share, in cash. The transaction, unanimously approved by both companies’ boards of directors and subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close by the end of this quarter.
Viela shareholders with about 54% of its outstanding shares of common stock have agreed to turn over those shares under the agreement. That includes British drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN), Viela’s biggest stockholder and former parent of MedImmune, which it absorbed in February 2019. AstraZeneca said Monday it will divest its 26.7% ownership and expects to receive between $760 million and $780 million in cash proceeds and profit upon the sale.
Information about the fate of Viela’s existing leadership under the deal were not immediately available, and Viela declined to comment. But, a Horizon spokesman said in an email to the Washington Business Journal, “Horizon is committed long-term to maintaining and building upon the current Viela presence in the Gaithersburg area.”
The companies said in their announcement that the acquisition “strengthens current R&D capability by adding a team with early-stage research, translational and clinical development capabilities along with deep scientific knowledge in autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases.”
Viela counted more than 150 employees in July 2020 and at the time planned to reach a headcount of 180 by year’s end. Horizon employed 1,275 people at the end of September 2020, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The news sent Viela’s stock skyrocketing nearly 53% to $52.88 Monday morning.
The deal brings Uplizna — a treatment for a rare autoimmune disease called neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, which causes inflammation of the optic nerve and spinal cord and could result in irreversible blindness and paralysis — into Horizon’s commercial medicine portfolio, which also includes Thyroid Eye disease treatment Tepezza and chronic gout therapy Krystexxa.
For Horizon, the acquisition stands to expand its pipeline and accelerate its growth, its president and CEO, Tim Walbert, said in a statement. “We intend to maximize the full potential of Viela’s pipeline, including the pursuit of additional future indications.”
That pipeline comprises four therapeutic candidates focused on autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases now being studied across nine programs. That includes applying the core molecule in Uplizna, inebilizumab, to more diseases. Viela is now testing it in in phase 3 clinical trials in myasthenia gravis and other disorders.
“Now we’ve demonstrated Uplizna works really well in this pathway shared by many different types of autoimmune conditions. Therefore, we are pursuing other indications,” said Viela Bio CEO Bing Yao in a July interview. The company is also advancing other candidates for a range of conditions including Sjögren’s syndrome, kidney transplant rejection, rheumatoid arthritis and acute lung injury related to Covid-19.
“We are pleased that Horizon recognizes the value of our robust R&D pipeline, our commercial medicine Uplizna, which is an important treatment option for patients with NMOSD, and our talented team,” Yao said in a statement Monday. “We believe that the combined pipeline, including the pursuit of additional potential indications, has the potential to yield innovative new medicines to treat autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases. Our collective R&D expertise coupled with Horizon’s commercial capabilities, has the potential to provide benefit to more patients with high unmet treatment needs."
The sale comes less than three years after Viela spun out of MedImmune with hundreds of millions in venture funding. The company, a Fire winner of 2020, went public in October 2019 and got Uplizna through regulatory approval in June 2020, making its commercial launch the local biotech’s first.
The business hasn’t had the easiest time marketing the drug because of challenges from the coronavirus pandemic, including a widespread drop in patient visits to their doctors and a possible reluctance of physicians to change patients’ medication without in-person appointments, Viela reported in SEC filings. But it has realized revenue; Uplizna generated $2.3 million in revenue during the third quarter of 2020, after earning approval from the Food and Drug Administration in June.
