Eptinezumab-JJMR

Danish drugmaker Lundbeck will buy La Jolla, CA-based Longboard Pharmaceuticals for $2.6 billion in cash, the companies said Monday morning, marking the largest biopharma M&A deal since July . Neuroscience-focused Lundbeck will get access to a 5-HT2C superagonist that just entered Phase 3 last month for Dravet syndrome, a severe type of epilepsy found in infancy. The experimental medicine, known as bexicaserin, could also apply to other developmental and epileptic encephalopathies like Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and CDKL5 deficiency disorder, the company has said. Lundbeck projects a launch of bexicaserin in the last quarter of 2028 and global peak sales potential of up to $2 billion. The drugmaker also gets an S1P receptor modulator dubbed LP659 that is in Phase 1 and could be tested in multiple neurological diseases. Lundbeck CEO Charl van Zyl said Longboard will “become a cornerstone in Lundbeck’s neuro-rare franchise.” “Bexicaserin addresses a critical unmet need for patients suffering from rare and severe epilepsies, for which there are very few good treatment options available,” van Zyl said in a statement. Longboard spun out of Arena Pharmaceuticals with $56 million in October 2020. It went public five months later. Pfizer then bought Arena for $6.7 billion in December 2021. The deal comes amid a relatively dull past few months for public biopharma M&A, with many of the recent deals falling below $1.3 billion. There has been no deal of $5 billion or higher yet in 2024. Lundbeck itself has been relatively quiet on the acquisition front since its $1.95 billion Alder BioPharmaceuticals deal in September 2019. That led to a migraine drug approval a few months later for Vyepti . The Longboard deal is slated to close this quarter, and both boards have approved it, the companies said. Longboard will be bought for $60 per share $LBPH . Its share price skyrocketed 50% to $58 in premarket trading.

A meta-analysis of 137 trials of migraine drugs indicates that the newest class of treatments are less effective than the previous generation of triptan drugs in relieving acute headaches. A study from The BMJ indicates that the newest class of migraine drugs—which includes Pfizer’s Nurtec, AbbVie’s Ubrelvy and Eli Lilly’s Reyvow—is less effective in the acute treatment of migraines than a previous class of medicines.What's more, the newer drugs are no more effective in treating migraines than traditional headache remedies such as Tylenol, ibubrofen and aspirin, according to The BMJ's analysis.The study, a meta-analysis of 137 trials that together enrolled nearly 90,000 patients, indicates that the most effective treatments for migraine come from the triptan class. In head-to-head comparisons of the 17 drugs covered in the study, triptans demonstrated the best efficacy within 2 hours of use, led by eletriptan, which also delivered the best-sustained relief over 24 and 48 hours, according to the analysis.Eletriptan was brought to the market by Pfizer in 2002 and sold under the brand name Relpax. The next most effective medicines in providing relief at 2 hours were the following triptans (in order of performance): rizatriptan, sumatriptan and zolmitriptan. Rizatriptan is sold by Organon as Maxalt. GSK sells sumatriptan as Imitrex and AstraZeneca markets zolmitriptan as Zomig.“Triptans are currently widely underused, and access to the most effective triptans should be promoted globally and international guidelines updated accordingly,” the authors wrote. The BMJ analysis also concluded that the newest class of migraine treatments—which are called calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (CGRP) antagonists—should only be used after traditional headache meds.“While the recent introduction of lasmiditan (Reyvow), rimegepant (Nurtec), and ubrogepant (Ubrelvy) has expanded options for the acute treatment of migraine, the high cost of these newer drugs, along with the substantial adverse effects of lasmiditan, suggest their use as third-line options, after the less expensive, similarly efficacious, second-line options," the authors wrote.While the BMJ study focused on acute treatment of migraines, new CGRP treatments have also been approved as preventatives. Nurtec pills, for example, were approved in 2021 for use every other day to ward off potential migraines. Much hope has been pinned on the effectiveness of CGRP drugs. In 2022, Pfizer spent $11.6 billion in a buyout of Biohaven to gain Nurtec, which rolled up sales of $928 million last year. Meanwhile, Ubrelvy, which was approved in 2019, generated $815 million in sales.Several other CGRPs—all approved in 2018 for the prevention of migraines—also remain formidable. Eli Lilly’s Emgality generated $678 million in sales last year, while Teva’s Ajovy pulled in $435 million and Amgen’s Aimovig collected $303 million. Besides those drugs, Lundbeck's Vyepti won approval in 2020 and generated about $250 million last year.