Roche buys RNAi firm Mirus for $125M

Continuing its buying spree, as well as its entry into the ribonucleic acid interference technology arena, Swiss drug major Roche said on July 22 that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire the USA-based privately-held Mirus Bio Corp. The latter is a discoverer and developer of innovative nucleic acid-based technology, including a proprietary RNAi delivery platform.

Under the terms of the deal, Roche will fully acquire Mirus for $125.0 million and will maintain an RNAi research site in Madison, Wisconsin, where the firm is headquartered. Mirus' transfection reagents operations will be divested into a stand-alone business to be known as Mirus Bio LLC, without any anticipated effect on existing customers. Employees will be offered a transition into their respective business unit. Closing of the transaction is subject to standard conditions and is expected during the second half of this year.

The announcement of this accord followed that a day earlier of Roche's offer to gain full control of its already-majority-owned affiliate Genentech (see page 3). It also reinforces the major's ambitions in the RNAi sector, in which it agreed to an investment of up to $1.0 billion to gain a non-exclusive license to such technology from US firm Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (Marketletter July 2007). The latter company more recently also signed a deal of similar magnitude and relating to RNAi therapeutics with Japan's leading pharmaceutical company, Takeda (Marketletter June 2).