Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk AS said Friday that it has agreed to buy Emisphere Technologies Inc. and the royalty stream obligations of its Eligen oral drug-delivery platform for a total of $1.8 billion.
Emisphere Technologies is a drug-delivery company with proprietary technologies, such as Eligen SNAC, that enable drug therapies to be provided in a tablet formulation.
Novo Nordisk and Emisphere have collaborated since 2007 and Emisphere’s Eligen SNAC technology is used by Novo Nordisk under an existing license deal.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Novo Nordisk will buy all outstanding shares in Emisphere for $1.35 billion and will also acquire the Eligen SNAC royalty stream obligations owed to MHR Fund Management LLC, the largest shareholder of Emisphere, for $450 million.
The transaction will be debt financed and won’t impact Novo Nordisk’s operating profit outlook for 2020 or the share buyback program.
The acquisition is expected to have a net negative impact on operating profit of less than 1% in 2021 and broadly neutral to positive impact in the following years, it said.
“We intend to apply and further develop the [Eligen SNAC] technology and use it on current and future pipeline assets with the aim of making more biologic medicines orally available for patients,” Novo Nordisk’s Chief Scientific Officer Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen said.
