Carbetocin

Buying Soleno marks Neurocrine’s biggest M&A move since its founding in 1992 Neurocrine Biosciences, forever a possible M&A target in the biopharma industry, is making a major acquisition itself.Neurocine has reached a deal to acquire Soleno Therapeutics for $2.9 billion, bagging recently FDA-approved Vykat XR (diazoxide choline), the first therapy for hyperphagia in patients with the rare genetic neurodevelopment disorder Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS).Hyperphagia is an insatiable hunger, which can lead to co-morbidities such as obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases and death.The announcement of the Soleno deal comes a few months after Neurocrine unveiled an obesity pipeline led by a preclinical CRF2 agonist. Buying Soleno marks Neurocrine’s biggest M&A move since its founding in 1992. During an investor call Monday, Neurocrine CEO Kyle Gano, Ph.D., said Vykat XR holds blockbuster peak sales potential, adding that the first-in-class drug will immediately provide another revenue source. Samir Siddhanti, Neurocrine’s business development chief, touted how Soleno’s focus at the intersection of neurology and endocrinology “couldn’t be a better strategic fit” for Neurocrine. Evercore ISI analysts agreed that the “timing, asset profile, and role it can play in the [Neurocrine] narrative all fit well,” according to an April 6 note. For Neurocrine, Soleno helps “bridge a gap” between an uneventful commercial execution period and some pivotal readouts beyond 2027, the team said.However, analysts on the call questioned the drug’s long-term prospects, and Neurocrine’s stock price dropped about 2% in early trading Monday. The launch of Vykat XR has been strong. Approved by the FDA in March 2025 and launched in the second quarter, the drug generated $190 million sales for Soleno last year, including nearly $92 million from the fourth quarter. Neurocrine can expand the adoption of Vykat XR by leveraging its commercial infrastructure and therapeutic expertise, Gano said. The San Diego-based neuroscience specialist currently has two commercial products, Ingrezza for tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntingon’s disease, plus Crenessity, a CRF1 receptor antagonist for the treatment of a genetic disorder called classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia.Several other biotech companies are developing potential rivals to Vykat XR. But as Siddhanti pointed out, several projects in the space have hit setbacks lately. A few weeks ago, Aardvark Therapeutics paused a phase 3 trial of its gut-restricted small molecule candidate in PWS. And Acadia Pharmaceuticals simply abandoned its intranasal carbetocin program for hyperphagia in PWS in September 2025 after a phase 3 flop. But the clinical failures of other drugs do not necessarily guarantee a successful rollout of Vykat XR. To help assure analysts about Soleno’s value, Gano said Neurocrine underwent a “rigorous diligence process” before striking the deal. “What we’ve seen thus far across our diligence is all the profile aspects of a potential blockbuster in the making with Vykat XR,” the CEO said.In terms of the drug’s long-term outlook, Neurocrine’s chief commercial officer, Eric Benevich, observed an early launch pattern that draws some similarities to Crenessity.“There are some [academic] centers and some practices that have a concentration of these PWS patients,” Benevich said. “But there also is what we call a long tail of patients that are being cared for in community practices. And certainly, the majority of patients are outside of these centers of excellence or of these more concentrated practices. So it takes time to reach them all.”But an analyst from Wells Fargo suggested that expanding into the community setting may not be that easy. And since it takes some time for patients to realize the body weight benefits of Vykat XR, treatment adherence and persistence could pose an issue, the analyst noted. Besides, the drug’s label includes warnings for doctors to monitor for signs of edema or fluid overload. In response, Gano argued that Vykat XR is not a medication designed for weight loss.“We’re not looking for necessarily the opportunity to have patients lose weight here,” the chief executive said, “although if you start patients younger at a lower BMI, you can maintain their weight over time, and that would be something that we would look at moving forward.”As for the safety profile, Gano said the side effects are monitorable and reversible but acknowledged that “there’s going to be a very significant education component here.” To further bolster Neurocrine’s confidence in a long-term return on investment, the company believes that Vykat XR will have market exclusivity out to the mid-2040s, Gano said. For now, Neurocrine is focused on the drug’s U.S. opportunity, and the deal value is only modeled based on domestic sales, he added.Neurocrine’s Soleno buyout adds to a flurry of recent M&A transactions in the biopharma industry, helping alleviate concerns of a slow year following a quiet J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January. In the past two weeks, Gilead Sciences signed a potential $2.2 billion buyout of Ouro Medicines to get its hands on an autoimmune asset, Merck & Co. offered to buy blood cancer drug developer Terns Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion and Eli Lilly ponied up $6.3 billion upfront to take over Centessa Pharmaceuticals and its sleep disorder pipeline. Further, Biogen inked a deal to acquire Apellis Pharmaceuticals for about $5.6 billion in an immunology-focused transaction.