US: Novartis to buy The Medicines Co.

Novartis is nearing a deal to buy cholesterol-drug maker The Medicines  for nearly US$7 billion, in an expensive bid to expand its reach in the lucrative market for heart treatments, reported the Wall Street Journal. 

Using a fully diluted share count, the deal is worth about US$9.7 billion, one of the people said. 

The acquisition would help Novartis, which has a market value of more than US$200 billion, bulk up in a corner of the health-care market it is already targeting with drugs including its heart-failure treatment Entresto.

The cholesterol drug under development by Medicines, based in Parsippany, N.J., is aimed at patients who aren’t well-treated by older statin pills. 

Pairing the Novartis and Medicines therapies would give sales representatives more products to peddle to heart doctors, potentially boosting sales of each.

The Medicines drug is based on relatively new technology that uses the body’s molecular messengers, known as RNA, to turn off genes playing a role in a disease.The technology is known as RNA interference.

Full Content: Wall Street Journal

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