Eli Lilly and Company has completed its previously announced $960-million acquisition of CoLucid Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company focused on migraine therapies. Lilly announced the acquisition in January 2017, which boosts its existing portfolio in pain management for migraine, while adding a potential near-term launch to its late-stage pipeline.

Lilly had made a tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of CoLucid common stock for $46.50 per share, or approximately $960 million, which expired as scheduled on February 28, 2017. As of the expiration of the tender offer, 17,410,607 shares of CoLucid common stock were validly tendered, representing approximately 90.3% of the shares outstanding, and have been accepted for payment under the terms of the tender offer. Following its acceptance of the tendered shares, Lilly completed the acquisition of CoLucid through a second-step merger.

CoLucid is developing a drug candidate, lasmiditan, an oral 5-HT1F agonist in Phase III development for the acute treatment of migraine. The company anticipates filing the drug for regulatory approval in 2018. Lasmiditan was originally discovered at Lilly and was out-licensed to CoLucid in 2005, at a time when pain management was not a strategic area of focus for Lilly. Lilly has since reorganized its research and development efforts to focus on migraine as part of its pain management portfolio, which is an emerging therapeutic area for the company.

Lasmiditan joins Lilly’s pain management portfolio, which includes galcanezumab, a potential drug in Phase III development for preventing migraine and cluster headache, and tanezumab, which Lilly is developing in collaboration with Pfizer, for treating multiple pain indications, including osteoarthritis, lower back pain, and cancer pain.

Source: Eli Lilly and Company