Roche to acquire cell therapy maker Poseida Therapeutics in $1.5 billion deal

By Dave Graham and Ludwig Burger

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland's Roche will acquire its U.S. collaboration partner Poseida Therapeutics in a cash deal worth up to $1.5 billion, banking on complex immune cell therapies against several types of blood cancer to boost its development pipeline.

Roche will pay $9 per share in cash and stockholders will also receive a non-tradeable contingent value right for up to $4 per share based on achievements, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday, taking the deal value to up to around $1.5 billion.

It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.

"We have worked closely with Roche through our collaboration focused on hematologic malignancies, and we are excited to join Roche to work as colleagues together across our pipeline and future programs," Kristin Yarema, president and CEO of the San Diego-based Poseida, said in a statement.

Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker is pursuing a variety of therapeutic fields to offset falling oncology sales. He has set a high deal pace to restore a development pipeline that was hit by trial setbacks in Alzheimer's and cancer immunotherapy in 2022.

Roche in December agreed to take over Carmot for $2.7 billion upfront, seeking to challenge dominant makers of new weight-loss drugs.

The Poseida acquisition will add so-called allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies, which use genetically modified immune cells to attack cancer cells or to treat autoimmune diseases.

Poseida is also working on CAR-T programmes for solid tumours and autoimmune diseases, along with Poseida's genetic engineering platform and related medicines in early research stages, it added.

Also on Tuesday, Roche suffered the latest in a string of setbacks in its development of a new type of cancer immunotherapy, saying that drug candidate tiragolumab failed to improve survival in certain cases of lung cancer.

Tiragolumab is part of a new class of drugs known as anti-TIGIT, which was pioneered by Roche and has attracted a range of rival developers working on similar compounds.

Competitor Merck & Co has stopped two trials exploring the drug class, however, while partners Gilead and Arcus earlier this year shifted priorities in their trial programme.

(Reporting by Dave Graham in Zurich, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; editing by Tom Hogue, Miranda Murray and Jason Neely)