Shire to buy specialty drugmaker NPS Pharma for $5.2 billion


Irish drugmaker Shire PLC pronounced Sunday it will compensate $5.2 billion to acquire NPS Pharmaceuticals Inc., that specializes in drugs for singular conditions.

The merger will enhance Shire’s portfolio of specialty drugs, drugs for niche diseases and conditions that typically authority most aloft cost tags than required medications. Shire’s best-selling drugs now embody a courtesy necessity disorder drugs Vyvanse and Adderall XR.

Under a agreement, authorized by a play of directors from both companies, Shire will acquire all superb shares of a Bedminster, New Jersey-based association for $46 per share in cash.

NPS now has one drug on a marketplace in a U.S. and Europe: Gattex, that is used to provide brief bowel syndrome, a potentially life-threatening ongoing condition that prevents patients from interesting nutrients from food. The drug had sales of $67.9 million for a initial 9 months of 2014.

NPS is available capitulation from a Food and Drug Administration for a second drug, Natpara, that is designed to provide a singular condition called hypoparathyroidism, in that a physique produces deficient levels of parathyroid hormone. That hormone plays a pivotal purpose in determining a body’s serum calcium and phosphate levels as good as activating vitamin D.

The FDA was scheduled to make a preference on a drug in late October, though pronounced it would extend a examination by 3 months.

Last tumble Shire and U.S.-based drugmaker AbbVie deserted a $55 billion understanding to mix their companies.

North Chicago-based AbbVie had envisioned shopping Shire and reincorporating on a British island of Jersey, where Shire is incorporated. But AbbVie’s house got cold feet after a U.S. supervision combined new stipulations on a taxation advantages of incorporating overseas.