Sanofi angles to buy Kiadis for €308 million
pharmafile | November 2, 2020 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Sanofi, kiadis, pharma
Sanofi has announced it is poised to buy out Amsterdam-based biopharma firm Kiadis in an all-cash public offer of €308 million, a valuation of €5.45 per share.
For Sanofi, the focus of the acquisition is Kiadis’ proprietary K-NK platform which utilises allogenic natural killer (NK) cells and can help make products “rapidly and economically available for a broad patient population across a wide range of indications,” according to the company.
As part of the deal, Sanofi hopes to use the platform to develop K-NK cells as a therapy for post-exposure pre-emptive use in high-risk COVID-19 patients, with Phase 1/2a clinical trials planned.
Additionally, Sanofi also wants to use Kiadis’ technology to evaluate potential therapies to prevent and treat relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukaemia. Dr John Reed, Global Head of Research & Development at Sanofi, commented: “We believe the Kiadis ‘off the shelf’ K-NK cell technology platform will have broad application against liquid and solid tumours, and create synergies with Sanofi’s emerging immuno-oncology pipeline, providing opportunities for us to pursue potential best-in-disease approaches.”
Both the Management and Supervisory Board’s of Kiadis have already given their unanimous approval for the proposed deal.
“Kiadis’ vision is to bring novel cell-based medicines to people with life-threatening diseases, and this transaction will help achieve that vision,” added Arthur Lahr, Chief Executive Officer of Kiadis. “After the discontinuation of our lead product candidate and subsequent reorganisation in 2019, we restarted Kiadis in 2020 as an entirely new company focused solely on the proprietary and differentiated NK-cell platform that we obtained through the acquisition of Cytosen Therapeutics.
“We believe this transaction represents compelling value to shareholders and offers a fair reflection of the potential of our platform and pipeline, given the risk/reward profile typical to biotech and the capital required to execute our business plan,” he continued. “Finally, this transaction will provide excellent career opportunities for our employees, who will be viewed by Sanofi as their internal cell-therapy experts.”
Matt Fellows
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