2018 set to be big for Duchenne muscular dystrophy deals, reveals GlobalData

This year will be big for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) as interest in treatments is on the rise and deal activity is increasing, reported data and analytics company, GlobalData.

“Mergers and acquisitions tend to bring in high revenues for drug deals and can indicate that a company has made a major investment into a certain therapy area,” explained Lisa Marris, healthcare analyst at GlobalData. “However, capital raising and strategic alliance transactions tend to be more numerous and provide the most insight into the climate of the DMD market.”

Over the last five years there has been an increasing interest in DMD drugs and a steady number of deals taking place each year. However, the value of the deals has varied year on year, noted GlobalData.

In 2016, deal value was particularly high, which was predominantly attributed to Shire’s acquisition of Baxalta for $32 billion, allowing the expansion of Shire’s portfolio of DMD drugs and strengthening its position in the rare diseases market.

Marris continued: “In 2017 $2.2 billion was issued in capital raising deals involving DMD pipeline drugs, and two-thirds of these deals were equity offerings. This suggests that companies were focusing on raising funds and investing in DMD research, which is likely to lead to further collaborative transactions in the coming years.”

Similar proportions of high capital-raising values to low strategic-alliance values occurred in 2014 and 2015 ($1.3 billion and $0.9 billion, respectively), whereas 2013 and 2016 favoured strategic alliance deals. The highest valued strategic alliance deals were seen in 2016, with a total of $1.3 billion, and the majority of these were licensing agreements. Strategic alliances in 2013 were mainly partnerships, with a total value of $1.1 billion.

“This shows a fluctuating trend between periods of high collaboration and low investments that switches to periods of less collaboration and more investments,” concluded Marris. “There was very high investment activity in 2017, and therefore it is likely that high-value capital raising will continue into 2018, but will possibly switch to favour DMD strategic alliances by the end of 2018 and into 2019. This could be an indicator of a big strategic alliance deal for DMD drugs later this year.”