September 17, 2008, 9:18 am
Small Swedish Pharma Could Be Buyout Target for Pfizer
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
Swedish flagKaro Bio, a Swedish shop with a promising experimental cholesterol-lowering drug, could soon have Big Pharma knocking on its door.
The company’s stock is up some 41% since August, Bloomberg reports. The big bounce came after the company released the results of a study that showed that a combination of Karo’s eprotirome and Pfizer’s Lipitor lowered cholesterol more than Lipitor alone.
Pfizer is set to lose patent protection on Lipitor in 2011, and the good-cholesterol booster that was supposed to replace it failed in a late-stage clinical trial. So the company could stand to make an acquisition that could allow it to keep its cholesterol franchise in tact.
But nobody’s commenting on any possible deals, and the drug is only in mid-stage testing, so this is still pretty speculative stuff. Even if a deal does go through, it will be small potatoes compared to some of the billion-dollar acquisitions we’ve been seeing.
The company’s market cap is well under $200 million. Despite the recent bounce, Karo’s still trading far below where it was a year ago, before it ended a collaboration with Merck to test another experimental medicine, Bloomberg says. |
