Last night, Celgene acquired the worldwide rights to develop a PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor from Chinese biotech Beigene for use in patients with solid tumors. The financial terms of the deal are surprisingly lucrative for Beigene. Celgene says securing ownership of a checkpoint inhibitor is important for its cancer immunotherapy plans for solid tumors. But the licensing deal also looks a bit desperate given the gap between itself and checkpoint inhibitor frontrunners like Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Before we get into all that, can we first please look at Beigene’s stock chart over the past few days leading up to the Celgene deal announcement on Wednesday night. This will make some people, perhaps the enforcement folks at the SEC, go, hmmm.
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