Delaware Money Moves: Incyte and AstraZeneca put billions into cancer pharm acquisitions

With the rise of Incyte, a global biopharmaceutical company headquartered at Augustine Cutoff in Wilmington, Delaware’s contribution to fighting cancer is becoming one of the state’s defining features, alongside banking and chemistry. The company’s co-development and recent buyout of Monjuvi is an example.

And Incyte isn’t the only one: AstraZeneca, which has had a large presence in Delaware for decades, is expanding into developing cancer treatments with radioconjugates through its recent acquisition. Here’s more about all those deals, plus a few others.

Incyte purchases cancer drug rights for $25M

Monjuvi is an FDA-approved medicine used to treat adult patients with treatment-resistant diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The drug was developed in collaboration with German biotech company MorphoSys, from which Incyte acquired rights to Monjuvi’s future revenue and development. The Delaware Business Times reported that Monjuvi brought in $92 million last year in the United States alone.

“This new agreement with MorphoSys provides Incyte with exclusive global rights to [Monjuvi] and full control over its development and commercialization, allowing us to realize significant operating efficiencies and cost synergies,” Incyte CEO Hervé Hoppenot said in a prepared statement.

AstraZeneca makes a $2.4B deal to acquire early-stage oncology startup

AstraZeneca has acquired Fusion Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian startup specializing in cancer-treating radioconjugates (RCs), for $2.4 billion.

AstraZeneca is a UK pharmaceutical company with a large Delaware presence, employing over 1,500 people in the state. It recently expanded its East Coast footprint through such moves as an expanded manufacturing facility in Maryland.

“Between thirty and fifty percent of patients with cancer today receive radiotherapy at some point during treatment, and the acquisition of Fusion furthers our ambition to transform this aspect of care with next-generation radioconjugates,” said Susan Galbraith, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president of oncology R&D, in a press release.

More Money Moves:

• JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has outlined the company’s Delaware expansion through an expected investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. The growth includes doubling the number of community center branches and expanding its second chance hiring program.
• Three federal grants totaling more than $2 million have been awarded for a trio of projects aimed at improving past transportation development that created community division in Wilmington and Georgetown. One of the projects is a 12-acre I-95 cap that will turn the open highway that the former city into a green space.