Licensing PARP Inhibitor A Win For BioMarin, Medivation

Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., are well acquainted with the Oakland Athletics baseball team’s Moneyball strategy: acquire a very young player, develop him somewhat, then flip the asset to a team in need of a more ready-for-prime-time player, for bigger bucks. Low-risk investment with a potentially large payoff. BioMarin’s deal for LEAD Therapeutics Inc., which brought it the poly-ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib, has paid off in this way: an $18 million outlay in 2010 garnering $410 million up front five years later. [See Deal][See Deal] Selling that asset in August to Medivation Inc. helps fuel both companies’ future growth. In addition to the money raised, it reduces BioMarin’s development expenses and helps it to meet its stated goal of being non-GAAP earnings positive in 2017. Medivation gets another compound it can develop in key oncology indications it is already pursuing with its core product, the prostate cancer drug Xtandi (enzalutamide).

Things have changed significantly for BioMarin since acquiring talazoparib: it has broadened its pipeline through a combination of internal drug development and in-licensing and is fully committed to the ultra-orphan...