Large pharmaceutical companies are often on the lookout for small strategic acquisitions of companies that have a promising pipeline candidate in their portfolio. Sometimes, acquiring a company with a promising early-stage candidate makes sense instead of developing a product from scratch, which involves a lot of time.
Swiss oncology major Roche RHHBY is all set to acquire a privately held biotechnology company, Adheron Therapeutics. Based in Berkeley, CA, Adheron has developed a revolutionary technology that disrupts cell adhesion to treat a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and fibrotic diseases through a cell surface protein called Cadherin-11.