Astra’s new gout drug after deal for US firm

The $32-a-share acquisition – a 54 per cent premium to Ardea’s closing price on Friday – is worth $1bn after deducting the existing cash held by Ardea, the companies said yesterday.

The planned purchase shows Britain’s second-biggest drugmaker delivering on a promise to step up deal-making to fix its drug pipeline. Research head Martin Mackay said last month he was looking at some acquisitions in the “low billions” of dollars.

The main asset secured by AstraZeneca is an experimental drug called lesinurad, or RDEA594, that is in final-stage Phase III clinical tests for treating patients with chronic gout who have too much uric acid in their blood.

Although gout is not a huge market, independent analyst firm Decision Resources puts sales of drugs for the disease at $1.87bn in 2019, with Ardea’s product – which is likely to be submitted for approval in the first half of 2014 – vying for a sizeable chunk of that business.

AstraZeneca and Ardea said they expected the transaction to close in the second or third quarter, adding that shareholders representing around 30 per cent of Ardea had agreed to vote in favour of the deal.

AstraZeneca is facing competition from cheap generic versions of several key drugs, including its big-selling antipsychotic Seroquel, at a time when its pipeline of new medicines is relatively barren.