Deal will expand AstraZeneca’s heart and kidney drug business
AstraZeneca said it has struck a deal to buy U.S. drug developer CinCor Pharma Inc to increase its inventory of heart and kidney drugs.
The backbone of the deal is the experimental therapeutic drug CinCor baxdrostat, which is being developed to treat conditions including high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease.
AstraZeneca is seeking to combine baxdrostat with its own Farxiga, a diabetes drug whose sales soared after it was shown to help patients with heart failure and kidney disease.
Farxiga, whose sales jumped nearly 50 percent to $3.2 billion in the first nine months of 2022, is in a highly competitive class of drugs that includes competitors such as Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s Jardiance.
AstraZeneca gets about a third of its revenue from cancer drugs, but its heart, kidney and diabetes drugs are the second most profitable business by sales, bringing in about $6.9 billion of the drug maker’s total revenue of more than $33 billion for the first three quarters of 2022.