Concentra Biosciences is living up to its reputation of buying beleaguered biotechs, this time swooping in to grab iTeos Therapeutics after the failure of its GSK-partnered TIGIT drug led the company to begin winding down.
Belgium-based iTeos decided in May that with its TIGIT dreams in ruins, its best bet was to wind down operations, sell its assets and return as much of its $600 million-plus cash pile to investors as possible. But an offer from Tang Capital-owned Concentra has changed all that.
Concentra has pledged to buy iTeos for $10.05 per share in cash—just below the $10.26 that the biotech’s stock closed at on Friday. iTeos’ shareholders will also receive a non-transferable contingent value right to receive a slice of whatever money is left in iTeos’ coffers beyond a baseline of $475 million, as well as a share of the proceeds of sales of any candidates from the company’s pipeline within six months of the deal’s close.
Those candidates include the ENT1-inhibitor EOS-984 and the anti-TREM2 antibody EOS-215, which are both in phase 1 development for solid tumors. Meanwhile, the biotech’s preclinical work features an obesity program that also targets ENT1.
Concentra has a reputation for picking up biotechs that are down on their luck, and iTeos certainly fits the bill. The company’s main focus up until May was the anti-TIGIT antibody belrestotug, which the company had been working with British Big Pharma GSK to take through a series of clinical readouts. But that focus changed abruptly when the partners saw progression-free survival data that fell short of the level they deemed clinically meaningful.
A look at underwhelming data from another phase 2 trial sealed belrestotug’s fate, leading iTeos to review strategic alternatives before declaring that it would wind down.
iTeos will mark the latest in a string of acquisitions for Concentra, whose appetite for deals appears to be ramping up. So far this year, Concentra has signed off on mergers with struggling biotech companies including Elevation Oncology, Kronos Bio, Allakos and—just this month alone—both IGM and Cargo Therapeutics.
Not all of Concentra's recent M&A efforts have succeeded, though. In response to the company’s advances, two biotechs enacted "poison pill" defenses in March to keep Concentra away. One of them, Acelyrin, chose to merge with another biotech.