BioPharma

BridgeBio terminates effort to acquire remainder of Eidos Therapeutics

BridgeBio, which already owns about 66 percent of Eidos, had initially offered to buy the company in August, but the proposed deal was rejected. Eidos is developing a drug in the competitive ATTR space.

By Alaric DeArment on October 15, 2019

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A firm that helps launch biomedical research into new companies has called off a bid to acquire one of its subsidiaries.

Palo Alto, California-based BridgeBio Pharma said Monday that it had terminated a merger process with subsidiary Eidos Therapeutics, as it was unable to reach an agreement with Eidos to acquire the approximately 34 percent of the company that it does not already own.

Eidos trades publicly on the Nasdaq, and its shares fell 6.5 percent Monday morning following the news, remaining down 3.1 percent Tuesday afternoon. BridgeBio’s shares were up 2 percent.

The subsidiary, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is developing the drug AG10, which is currently in Phase III development for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, or ATTR-CM. The ATTR field has lately become highly competitive, with the Food and Drug Administration in May of this year approving two new drugs for ATTR-CM, Vyndaqel (tafamidis meglumine) and Vyndamax (tafamidis), both made by Pfizer. Last year, the FDA also approved two new drugs for hereditary ATTR, or hATTR – Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ Onpattro (patisiran), in August, followed by the October approval of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Akcea Therapeutics’ Tegsedi (inotersen).

BridgeBio had initially proposed buying the rest of Eidos in August, with an offer of 1.3 shares of BridgeBio for each Eidos share, which a special committee of Eidos’ board rejected, saying that it significantly undervalued the company. BridgeBio thereafter raised the offer to 1.5 BridgeBio shares and an option for Eidos shareholders to receive a portion of that in cash, for up to $110 million. However, Eidos rejected that offer as well.

In a note to investors Monday, BTIG analyst Thomas Shrader wrote that BridgeBio’s proposal seemed “a pretty hefty commitment for a company overwhelmingly messaging its ability to assemble a diverse and cherry picked pipeline.” Meanwhile, he wrote, Eidos will increasingly be a “blocking and tackling” story in a competitive ATTR market and thus “hardly the bread and butter of a high-tech focused clinical development company.”

BTIG gave AG10 a 70 percent chance of success in clinical development and assumed an ATTR-CM prevalence of 77,800 in the U.S., 122,200 in Europe and 30,200 in Japan.

Photo: Oko_SwanOmurphy, Getty Images