Roche reaches deep once again

Targeted oncology projects are among the hottest property to be found in biopharma right now, but the amount of cash that Roche is handing over to Blueprint is still impressive. The $650m that the Swiss pharma giant is paying up front for rights to pralsetinib ranks as the seventh largest initial payment made over the last five years. The table below includes single-product licensing deals struck over projects that were in clinical development at the time. The pralsetinib sum reflects the scarcity value that these genetically-specific agents carry, and a likely competitive deal process; after paying $1.7bn for Ignyta in late 2017, for the Ros1/NTRK targeted Rozlytrek, Roche was clearly motivated to add another product like it. Notably, only late last year Roche was writing another huge cheque, this time to Sarepta for ex-US rights to its Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy SRP-9001. The Swiss firm is not one of big pharma’s biggest spenders, a previous Evaluate Vantage analysis found, although it does invest more in R&D than its peers (Roche and Lilly most vested in research, July 3, 2020). Perhaps these recent deals point to a growing willingness at Roche to look outside its own labs.