(Reuters) -Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk said on Thursday it had agreed a $3.3 billion cash deal to buy Dicerna Pharmaceuticals which specializes in therapeutics that counteract disease-causing genes.
The two companies have been in a research collaboration since 2019 using Dicerna’s ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) therapeutics to silence selectively genes that cause or contribute to various diseases.
Under the partnership, they have worked on clinical candidates for disorders including chronic liver disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), type 2 diabetes, obesity and rare diseases.
“This acquisition supports Novo Nordisk’s strategy of developing and applying a broad range of technology platforms across all Novo Nordisk therapeutic areas,” the company said in a statement.
Novo Nordisk expects to initiate clinical development of the first investigational therapeutic to emerge from this collaboration in 2022.
The deal for $38.25 per share represents a premium of 79.7% to Dicerna’s closing price on Wednesday.
Novo’s U.S.-listed shares traded 1.2% higher in premarket. Its Copenhagen-listed shares were up 0.7%, largely unchanged.
The transaction, which will mainly be debt-financed, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The acquisition will not impact Novo’s full-year guidance, but is estimated to have a negative impact on operating profit growth in 2022 of around 3%.
(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Keith Weir)
